Last week, in their infinite wisdom, The Keyword announced that they're, Understanding searches better than ever before:
Last year, we introduced and open-sourced a neural network-based technique for natural language processing (NLP) pre-training called Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or as we call it--BERT, for short. This technology enables anyone to train their own state-of-the-art question answering system.
This breakthrough was the result of Google research on transformers: models that process words in relation to all the other words in a sentence, rather than one-by-one in order. BERT models can therefore consider the full context of a word by looking at the words that come before and after itโparticularly useful for understanding the intent behind search queries.
But itโs not just advancements in software that can make this possible: we needed new hardware too. Some of the models we can build with BERT are so complex that they push the limits of what we can do using traditional hardware, so for the first time weโre using the latest Cloud TPUs to serve search results and get you more relevant information quickly.
As can be expected every single time Google announces a search update, the SEO community went nuts.
You see, every time there's an update, the SEOs think this is an opportunity to get some attention by both positioning their expertise, as well as, instilling fear into their clients.
So, let me do you a favor: You don't need to spend a second thinking about BERT.
You're welcome.
Here's another gift from me to you: If someone pitches you on their BERT expertise, they actually did you a favor. You can summarily dismiss them as a charlatan.
You're welcome again.
However, if you get sucked into the BERT expertise lore, and you've read this, then you have no one but yourself to blame when you get bamboozled by your SEO guru. It's not Google. It's not SEOs. It's you. Take some accountability.
You should bookmark this post so that the next time someone pitches you on their special knowledge of a Google update you can talk yourself off the ledge.
And for those of you getting ready to comment, "but what about the ________ blank update," don't bother. Yes, some updates actually do impact how we do things day to day. But let's face it, those are extremely few and far between.
Until next time, meh links!
Here's a recent Google SERP for "๐๐ต๐ผ ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฏ๐ฒ๐๐ ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฟ ๐ฎ๐ฐ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ป๐ ๐น๐ฎ๐๐๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ ๐ถ๐ป ๐ฝ๐ต๐ถ๐น๐ฎ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐น๐ฝ๐ต๐ถ๐ฎ." Ads? โLSAs? โLocal Pack? โLinks? โ ๐ท AI Overview? โ 6 firms listed. Only one tiny ๐. Click the ๐ฆ๐ต๐ผ๐ ๐บ๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ button? ๐ฌ๐ผ๐ ๐ด๐ฒ๐: Here's a more detailed look at some of these firms: THE PEARCE LAW FIRM, P.C.Edith Pearce, […]
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Meh, links! All things being equal, links still tend to move the dial more than any other factor in legal SERPs. Maybe links are having a diminishing impact internet-wide. But in my experience, quality links, especially relevant links (both topically and geographically), tend to improve law firm visibility in search more than most everything else. […]
