The world-famous search engine, Google makes some changes to its algorithm almost every day. If some are small twists, some seriously shake up the SERPs. We frequently search for information on Google, and it brings millions of results for us to choose. Google Algorithm is a set of rules to rank the pages and deliver them. Which page to show up and in what order, is commonly based on Google algorithm.

Meet BERT, Google’s latest algorithm update that makes search smarter and impacts 10% of search queries.

Wondering what Google’s latest algorithm BERT is? Want to know how it works and how it will impact search?
Keep reading.

What exactly is Google BERT update?

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. It is a deep learning algorithm related to natural language processing. Google’s latest algorithm update, BERT, would help Google to understand the intent behind users’ search queries and provide more relevant results.

BERT processes words concerning all the other words in a sentence, rather than only by one or two words.

For instance, you type a query What is Google BERT algorithm?

Now, based on this long-tail keyword, Google would be able to understand the context behind a query and would provide users with a more accurate and relevant SERPs. BERT helps a machine to understand what words in a sentence mean, but with all the nuances of context.

Google’s latest algorithm, BERT began rolling out in Google’s search system from October 21, 2019, in the US in English and is helping with one out of every ten searches. The newest algorithm is expected to come to more countries and languages in which Google offers search in the coming days; however, there is no set timeline.

Google has said that the inclusion of the BERT algorithm is likely to have some impact on a brand’s organic visibility and traffic.

You might not notice it now but will understand later. So, this is no small change!

With the inclusion of the BERT algorithm, Google goes one step closer to understand the natural language processing better. And, this also means that the voice search results will see significant improvement.

A quick round-up (Types of Google algorithm updates yet)

Google keeps updating its algorithm once or twice every month. Have you ever wondered Why Google makes some changes every then and now?

The answer is simple and straight. Search engines are meant to serve people.

When people behavior change, technology needs to evolve to meet people needs and wants. Because of this, Google frequently tweaks how they treat rankings, links, and especially content in the wake of these rapid changes.
Neither SEO expert nor content marketer can predict the future google updates and what impacts it would have on the search results.

According to Live Internet Stats, Google receives around 77,500 queries per second on any given day. Pretty impressive, right?

So even the smallest changes to Google algorithm can have a massive influence on the search results.

Google Panda

Google introduced Panda on February 2011 to stop the prevalence of sites and page with poor quality contents in Google’s organic search engine results. Panda examines websites based on the quality of its content. Pages with high-quality content will get advantage and vice versa.

Google Penguin

Google released Penguin on April 2012 to diminish the presence of websites that engaged in manipulative, irrelevant links schemes and keyword stuffing in the search engine results. Well, Penguin has a lot in common with Panda, but it assesses websites for a different issue- their link profiles. Penguin makes sure to penalize sites that use black-hat techniques and dubious links and reward sites that are offering a great visitor experience.

Google Hummingbird

Google introduced Hummingbird on September 2013 to interpret search queries and provide results that match searchers intent. Hummingbird lets the search engine to get the actual meaning behind a search query and deliver the best result that a user is looking for when they type a keyword in the search engine.

Google Pigeon

Google released Pigeon released in July 2014 to increase the ranking of the local business listing in the search engine results. The Pigeon was designed to improve the website’s rankings by its respective business’ location and distance from the user. The closer, the higher.

Google Mobile-Friendly Update

Google introduced the Mobile-Friendly update on April 2015 to have a mobile-friendly site to gain the user experience. This update is designed to boost the mobile-friendly sites or pages in Google’s mobile search results.

Google RankBrain

Google introduced RankBrain update on October 2015 that helps Google understand the meaning behind queries so that it can serve best-matching search results in response to those queries. RankBrain is a machine-learning artificial intelligence system and a part of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm.

Google Possum

Google introduced Possum in September 2016 to improve Google’s local search results. Possum help businesses to show up in local search results dependent on the searcher’s location.

Google Fred

Google released Fred in March 2017 that helps Google target websites that violate Google’s webmaster guidelines. Sites and blogs with low-quality content mostly created to generate ad revenue get penalized. The targeted websites would lose significant traffic and drop from Google’s search engine results.

Use this resource to learn more about Google Fred update.