BERT: The Newest AI
It’s Halloween today and I tried to think of something spooky, and an AI that can think like a human is normally pretty scary. Sadly, a program named BERT that’s just trying its best to help people find what they’re looking for isn’t exactly the Skynet scenario that’s built to frighten. Anyway, onwards with the informative part:
What does BERT do?
BERT is Google’s most advanced user-intent AI. Its algorithm will help the search console decipher vague queries. Google has employed user-intent AI’s in the past, but BERT is more advanced than the past programs could have ever dreamed to be.
What results does BERT affect?
BERT is still in the process of being rolled out but is expected to impact upwards of 10% of searches. It will affect rankings on those searches and can also impact featured snippets. What’s important to remember is that this update is designed to improve user experience, not webmaster experience.
Can I optimize for BERT?
Nope. BERT is not designed to be optimized for. If your content is relevant and well designed for the user’s intent you might have a better chance of ranking higher than in the past, but that is up to BERT. You cannot negotiate with BERT.
How does BERT work?
BERT was designed through open sourcing, machine learning, and many Google employees working overtime. It is described on the Google AI blog as “deeply bidirectional, unsupervised language representation, pre-trained using only a plain text corpus (in this case, Wikipedia).”
So how should I proceed with my content?
Keep making good content, keep making it relevant. The same rules that applied before still apply now.
If you’re unsure how to create a content plan or optimize your website for the modern age, contact Mockingbird Marketing and we can talk about it!