🔍 Google brings BERT to Search: What you need to know

Oct 28, 2019

Good morning search marketers, the machines are catching up to us.

Google welcomed BERT into the search system fold last week. The company's latest search algorithm rolled out for English queries last week and will expand to other languages in the future. BERT will impact the search results for about 1 in 10 queries, Google said.

BERT, which stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (I will never get that right in trivia, so bet against me now), is designed to help machines better understand the nuances of natural language. As voice queries, in particular, grow, BERT should help Google surface more relevant results.

BERT's fundamental benefit is in helping close the gap between what machines understand and how humans speak and write.

Whereas so much of early SEO was about striking a balance between writing for machines (to gain search visibility) and writing for readers (to gain, well, business), advances like BERT will enable marketers focus more on their customers — and further shift SEO priorities away from on-page content optimization. Google said it's the biggest change since Rankbrain, and, as with Rankbrain, you can't "optimize" for it.

I asked Google if BERT was being used for ads, yet. It's not, but it's easy to see how it could help solve some of the bad close variants matching we currently see.

In other news, Amazon's ad business grew by more than 45% year-over-year in the third quarter. It is focusing on machine learning to deliver high ad relevancy and building out its video and OTT advertising capabilities. The company said it's expecting a record holiday season, despite it being 6 days shorter than last year's span between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Read on for a Pro Tip on using Google Ads' new audience options and more.

Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief

Pro Tip

4 tips for setting up new audiences in Google Ads

"When you start applying new audiences to your search campaigns, Google's guidance often mirrors how long you've been using your audiences," explains Matt Lawson of Google. "That said, there are some specific things to keep in mind as you use new audience types. 1. Start the planning process by taking a look at Google Ads Audience insights. You can find out all sorts of information about who you're already reaching, or who you might be better at reaching. 2. Apply audiences with the 'Observation' setting as a start. Add the audiences you think you might care about, then let the metrics roll in. This is a quick step, but an important one. 3. Start with the most relevant audiences first. Start with two to three of the most impactful ones, and only expand once you've shown them to be effective. 4. Apply audiences at the campaign level. You can apply at the ad-group level if you have specific reasons, but for most people campaign level should give you the coverage you're looking for.

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Search Shorts

Markup changes, PDFs and site structure.

Corporate contact markup. Lizzi Harvey from Google said Google has deprecated the corporate contact markup for its knowledge panels.

PDFs rank. John Mueller from Google said Sometimes PDFs are a great way to help users with a specific question / problem they're facing. There's no inherent advantage or disadvantage…

Site structure. If you significantly change your site structure, yes, that can impact your rankings in Google, said John Mueller of Google.

See The BIG SMX East Preview!

SMX East kicks off November 13-14 in NYC — and it's our biggest agenda ever. Join us for over 100 search marketing presentations from industry experts and market-defining solutions providers, including two new tracks on agency operations and local search marketing for multi-location brands. Click the link below to access your exclusive preview of everything in store!

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