Good morning Search Marketer, some Friday deep thoughts for you today.
For years, there have been signs that Apple is investing in search capabilities of its own. But estimates of just how big the current search deal between Google and Apple is worth — $8 to $12 billion — gained a lot of attention when the DOJ filed its antitrust suit against Google last week. That got Greg Sterling wondering if the Google antitrust case will make an Apple search engine more likely. Even with Apple's resources, gaining search share will be an uphill battle, says Greg, and unless the government forcibly ends the search deal, there is little incentive to break away on its own.
Could Google passage indexing be leveraging BERT? That's the question international technical SEO consultant Dawn Anderson dives into in a fantastic, deeply sourced look at BERT, BERT-like models, the incredible advancement of algorithms to understand long form content — and what it all may mean for passage indexing and SEO. "Whilst much of this work is very new, a year is a long time in the AI NLP research space so expect huge changes by this time next year," says Dawn.
OK, that's it for the brain teasers. I'll leave you with a quick note that Google Ads released a new look for building custom reports in Report Editor yesterday. If you use Data Studio, it will feel a bit more like that, just less sophisticated. There are new features such as conditional formatting and more sorting and filtering.
Ginny Marvin,
Editor-In-Chief
