One of Google’s most recent search updates has brought with it the BERT algorithm, which is designed to improve Google’s understanding of user intent behind each search, subsequently providing more relevant results for users.
According to Google, BERT will affect up to 10 percent of searches and will have an impact on certain brands’ visibility in search engines and traffic to their website, which you may not discover.
Here is a closer look at BERT and what it means for the future of search.
What Exactly Is BERT?
Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or BERT, is a neural network-based method for the pre-training of natural language processing. Put simply, it’s a new technique used to help Google parse individual search queries and determine the specific context of words that people use.
For instance, for the terms “concerts in town” and “drops in traffic,” “in” would have a completely different context. This is obvious to us, but not necessarily to a search engine. BERT allows Google to identify the specific nuance of a word to provide people with results that are truly relevant to what they’re trying to find.
