Google BERT update: the biggest update ever?

In mid-October, Google launched an important algorithm update: BERT. Google calls this the most significant update ever. Then, of course, all alarm bells go off in an SEO country.

What is the BERT update?

The BERT update is an improved deep learning algorithm with regard to 'natural language processing' (NLP). This algorithm helps Google to understand the nuances of human language much better. This update is, therefore, primarily aimed at searches formulated in natural language or conversations (eg, voice search).

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. It works by looking at a word in relation to the words before and after (bidirectional) with a special kind of neural network (transformer).

Or in the words of Google itself:

"These improvements are oriented around improving language understanding, particularly for more natural language / conversational queries, as BERT can help Search better understand the nuance and context of words in Searches and better match those queries with helpful results."

It is a huge step, but BERT is not yet ready to understand the language on a human level. This is especially important for the Assistant. Below some examples of this.

Here you can see the importance of nuance and understanding of human language. Also, note what Google says about this:

"Particularly for longer, more conversational queries, or searches where prepositions like 'for' and 'to' matter a lot to the meaning, Search will be able to understand the context of the words in your query. You can search in a way that feels natural to you."

BERT is an open source, and there are already many versions of BERT. If you want to know more about the operation of the BERT and Transformer network, I advise you to start with the following articles:

Off-topic: Why BERT and not BRENT?

Am I the only one who thinks: if you can make a backronym like BERT, how much trouble is it to make it BRENT? Bidirectional Representation Encoder from Neural Transformers sounds better right? Anyway, continue with the blog.

Hummingbird> RankBrain> BERT

If you look at the trend of the latest Google algorithm updates (see Hummingbird, see RankBrain), then BERT is a logical next step. Google puts a huge amount of resources into understanding the human language used to be able to understand users' searches much better and to provide a more specific (and therefore better) answer. They do this because 15% of searches that have never been performed have to be processed every day. And with the rise of voice search, it is only becoming more important to bring language comprehension to a human level. As per SEO Expert Jagdish Prajapat - “After BERT update, Bing is also making its image search engine more precise through improved understanding of the relationships between user queries, images, and webpages:”

Google calls this itself the most significant update in 5 years. But why didn't we realize when Google started talking about it?

Google update

Google never actually makes announcements about launching updates. So this is already a new experience. Usually, this is about such an update as follows:

• Noise at SEO forums about losing rankings
• SEO people ask Google questions via Twitter
• Google comes with vague statements in which 7x 'great content' and 'for the users' must be included under penalty of 1000 push-ups
• Someone names the update after an animal
• The larger SEO blogs delve deeper into the matter and come up with an analysis
• Companies come to Traffic Builders, and we solve the problem

Strangely enough, all the alarm bells went off only after Google announced the update. There was hardly any fuss on SEO forums, and the various tools that keep up with fluctuations in the rankings did not go off.

So SEO people and tools did not notice the biggest Google update ever. Are SEO people sleeping? Do the tools fail? Or does Google call what?