Next Google Search Evolution - BERT Models

[rustybrick]

---

System: The following 3 messages were cut out of thread at: https://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4966830.htm [webmasterworld.com] by goodroi - 6:56 am on Oct 25, 2019 (utc -5)

---

Google has confirmed a massive change impacting 1 in 10 of all queries named BERT [blog.google...]

[jediviper]

I am really curious to see how rankings will be affected.
SEMrush sensor shows no fluctuations yet.

[glakes]

Thanks for the info Barry.

BERT or no BERT, Google is not sending any converting traffic. No matter the acronym, Google just continues to get worse and drive shoppers away to Amazon...

[goodroi]

Tried to research more information about this. I searched "google bert models" and all I see are SEO news sites outranking Google's own announcement about this. Perhaps Google might want to hire some SEOs to optimize their own blog.

[YabaiSeo]

Bill Lambert called it yet again, he must have some insider knowledge

[JorgeV]

Hello-

Sounds like a powerful tool to improve... Google's answer boxes ...

[StupidIntelligent]

This is what Bill Lambert has been calling out.

[Shepherd]

I searched "google bert models" and all I see

Maybe Bert is not self aware yet...

[Solipsism]

Bill Lam "Bert", he knew it since the beginning. The prophecy is true.

[engine]

I was reading this earlier: Google has said it has improved search query understanding through machine learning of natural language processing (NLP), as it calls it, pre-training. The BERT bit, is Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers.

If you're an SEO you should read and understand the full document as you'll get a better idea on how to rank sites and pages. I do mean every SEO, especially those still using outdated tactics and wondering why they might not be ranking.

[blog.google...]

[Selen]

"BERT" will be used as another handy excuse (besides national holidays and the weather) why a site lost visitors.

[StupidIntelligent]

What will now happen to EAT shillers? Guess, they'll BERT out fresh load of crap in the coming days.

[NickMNS]

More proof that it is the end of the "keyword". This should be a clear message that the use keyword ranking tools are of no value and total waste of money. As if this wasn't already the case.

I guess the September update should be called the Bert Update, making the next update the Ernie update.

[iamlost]

In one sense BERT is not new; G open sourced it last year and there have been several iterations from all the usual suspects since, i.e. RoBERTa from FB, even ALBERT aka parameter lite BERT from G and Toyota. And there have been variations on the foundation theme since at least the early 2000s.

What is really new is that as RankBrain has increasingly failed G has needed to underpin query misunderstandings. Welcome BERT!

From my readings, conversations, and (few limited) tests BERT is useful but constrained. The longer and/or more complex the sentence the greater the likelihood BERT will fail. The greater the number of sentences (2 is pretty much a hard limit, 1 a practical limit) the greater the likelihood BERT will fail.

So: BERT:
* is able to handle contextual meanings generally well. And English specialised in words with multiple aka contextual meanings.

* just as named entities are a step past keywords BERT is a contextual step further.

* BERT will probably be restricted to basic/simple Q&A type situations. So... how well does your content provide simple short sentence answers? So... do you want to provide answer box scraped content ... until?

Note: Baidu has open sourced ERNIE (now version 2) which is reasonably comparable to BERT (and variations) in English and much better for Chinese and similar.

The past year or so has seen increasing activity, break throughs, and available options (open sourced code!) in NLP and NLU. Great fun.

[lucy24]

all I see are SEO news sites outranking Google's own announcement about this

Alternative explanation: G has manually put other results ahead of themselves in order, paradoxically, to make it look more important.

[Travis304]

For once, here's a google update that I actually look forward to -- IF their crackpot engineers stopped d*cking around long enough (took a break from needlessly flip-flopping SERP data every 12 hours) and made an AI that is really, truly capable of understanding context and semantics. In fact, for all of Google's wooing and woh-ing and exampling of "E-A-T" content in their Quality Rater Guidelines, this appears to be the first time the company has actually made a measurable effort to leverage new technology to satisfy that intent.

We'll see how well it gets implemented.

[martinibuster]

This rolls out to English in the U.S. for both SERPs and featured snippets. It rolls out to 24 countries/languages for featured snippets.

As the system learns from this first iteration in the U.S.A. Google will then roll it out worldwide.

This currently affects 10% of search queries in English in the USA. That's a pretty big footprint.

---

Re BERT search queries, I get the GitHub repository and Google's blog announcement top of the organics when I search for "google bert models"

That said, Google is supposed to highlight news sites for trending topics. That's how Google is supposed to work.

[mosxu]

“2019 brazil traveler to usa need a visa.” The word “to“ is the most important now for them.

Are these people/robots that advanced?

[seomotionz]

Nonsense technicalities from Google. Because SERP results are just BS now than ever.

[whoa182]

I wondered what happened over the last few days because from what I see, the search results are so much more relevant and far better.

[seomotionz]

@whoa182 Maybe its for you but for me, its not.

[samwest]

SERPs in my vertical unchanged by BERT so far...but filters and zombies are full ON.

[heisje]

While Bertie seems a significant development in the realm of AI and applied machine learning, as a matter of caution webmasters should realize this concerns how the leftover crumbs are sorted out after the wholesale looting of search results by Google and its properties. Just don't get too excited over it - not more than reality on the ground warrants.
.

[not2easy]

this concerns how the leftover crumbs are sorted out

To me it looks more like they want smaller holes in that breadcrumb sieve. Keeping more searches from ever leaving the results page. :(

[aristotle]

If it works, it should reduce mis-matched traffic to your sites.

And possibly increase well-matched traffic, although somehow I doubt it will work as well for this.

[IanCP]

Does this mean a search for...

"Transfer money from Payoneer TO Paypal" - my emphasis added.

Will now actually produce desired results instead of 100's and 100's of pointless links telling you how to transfer money from Paypal to Payoneer?

[seomotionz]

@IanCP who knows?! It might now say Paypal to Payza, or even better how to physically withdraw money via debit or credit card and then follow the address to another bank which will have your Payza acc credit card and personally deposit the money to them.

[goodroi]

I'm happy for Googlers who have been working hard on this but for SEOs I'm having trouble seeing how this significantly changes how we do our business. Hopefully we benefit by gaining more relevant traffic that converts better because Google is now supposedly smarter and sending searchers to better matching sites. So far, it doesn't seem to really change SEO best practices. We are still going to create good title tags for relevant & engaging content. Maybe we become a little more careful when using grammatical prepositions but I'm not seeing how BERT significantly changes SEO best practices.

[heisje]

but I'm not seeing how BERT significantly changes SEO best practices

Apparently it doesn't, nor is it supposed to.

.

[aristotle]

Well if BERT comes up with a better interpretation of a search term, then it should mean that a different group of sites will be competing for the top spots in the organic results for that particular term.

So if you can anticipate some of the new search terms that your site can now compete for, then you can enhance your site's treatment of its information related to those terms.