Everything You Need to Know About Google’s Latest Algorithm Update
5th December 2019
Is a Google Update Wreaking Havoc on Your Search Results?
19th March 2020
Google Search SEO
Google released their biggest update in five years, but how will BERT affect your SEO campaign?
Google pushes out hundreds of updates each year. Many slip through under the radars of digital marketing agencies in South Africa because they don’t have much of an impact. The latest Google update, however, carries massive significance.
BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) is the latest update to the Google search ranking system with many calling it the biggest update in the last five years! Google themselves predict that over 10% of all search queries will be affected, meaning each website in its directory is likely to be affected.
What is the new Google BERT update all about?
In their ongoing quest to integrate AI with natural human connection, Google BERT focuses on improving understanding and various languages in the search for a better understanding of natural human communication. For example, Google search understands when you ask, “what is the weather today” and displays the temperature and forecast. Google can even do the same if you ask, “Do I need an umbrella today?”
Let’s say you want the weather in a specific location like Japan. You may ask “what is the weather today”, and Google might use your current location, then display the weather in your area instead of displaying the weather in Japan. With the new update improving on context and relevance, Google can understand you’re looking for the weather in Japan and not in your current location based on your conversation and recent searches.
Currently, the new Google BERT update is only focused on long-tail keywords and searches because shorter ones are quite specific. Future updates, however, will see this update incorporated into shorter search queries as well.
Why did agencies miss this Google update?
Because so many digital marketing campaigns and digital agencies focus on specific keywords and short search queries, the latest Google BERT update may have gone under the radar. It’s only being integrated into longer search queries for now. The tracking tools used for SEO companies will start noticing the changes in their results when Google pushes BERT into shorter queries. Thus far only a few companies have discovered this update due to their campaign focus.
Why focus on longer queries?
Focusing on longer queries isn’t something new for many SEO marketing managers. Because competition is so tough on shorter search queries and specific keywords are getting too expensive for smaller campaign’s ROI, many companies choose to focus on longer search queries. This focus can also be attributed to the increased use of mobile search engines like Google Assistant that receive more natural search queries than desktop due their incorporation of speech recognition.
Do I need to change my campaign?
If your digital marketing campaign is managed by P.tch SEO Specialists, then your account manager would already have connected with you regarding the strategy changes. If you manage your own SEO campaign or have a digital marketing company in South Africa managing your search engine optimisation campaign, we suggest that you contact them today to inquire about what your campaign needs to change.
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Sources: Smart Insights
Steven Green
Sporty fun loving “Half IronMan” with self-acclaimed degree in Search engine optimisation & Entrepreneurship. CEO & Founder of Trafficfundi, P.tch Digital & Greenies Comics.
