Google’s popularity as the leading search engine has mainly resulted from the fact that the technology giant is constantly working towards ensuring an enhanced user experience. The biggest proof of this is that the company regularly releases new updates for its search algorithm to make online search easier and more relevant for users. One such update released by Google in 2019, which everybody seems to be talking about, is the BERT update. It is believed by many to be one of the most important updates released by the company in the past four years and is likely to impact 1 out of every 10 search queries.
Getting Familiar With The Google BERT Update
Google has described BERT as one of the biggest leaps forward in the history of search. BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers and is aimed to help the search engine better understand searches conducted in a conversational tone. Put simply, the primary objective of BERT is to understand language and phrases more like a human and less like a robot. It educates Google’s search function to interpret the nuances of the search queries and match the search intent to the searcher’s intent as closely as possible. That is why almost every SEO agency in India and around the world, is of the opinion that BERT update will prove especially beneficial for the niche of content marketing.
Likely Implications Of BERT On Content Marketing
The most important thing that SEO professionals need to understand is that BERT analyzes search queries rather than the content on a page. In fact, BERT does not change the most fundamental aspect of content marketing, namely that of creating content for users. Rather it focuses more on the context of search queries. Thus when users type long strings of words to conduct a search, Google no longer interprets the words individually. Now with the BERT update, the search engine tries to interpret the entire string of words in the context of each other.
Another significant aspect of the BERT update is that content marketing professionals do not have to fulfill any special or specific optimization requirements for the same. All they need to do is to ensure that all the content created and updated is written keeping actual people in mind and in a natural conversational language. With the update capable of taking into consideration prepositions like “for” and “to”.
These are two of the most common and perhaps most confusing words used in the English language, which when interpreted incorrectly can alter the meaning of a sentence completely. But now with BERT, Google is able to better understand the use of these words with reference to the context and this is definitely a really good thing for content marketers creating straightforward and easy to understand the content.
BERT – A Step In The Direction Of Eliminating “Keyword–ese”
According to SEO experts, the BERT update can also help Google in fulfilling the objective of eliminating “Keyword-ese”. It is a term used to define the phenomenon of searchers using an awkward combination of keywords and phrases while trying to make Google understand what exactly they are searching for. With BERT’s focus on making it easier to search for information in a more natural manner, many see it as another step taken by Google in its attempts to make the search experience more human.
The update is the beginning of the long journey for ensuring that irrespective of the information they are seeking or the language they speak, the users are able to search in a manner that feels natural to them.
The above discussion makes it quite clear that BERT is definitely going to change the online search and convert it into a more natural and conversational one.
