Google brings in BERT to improve its search results – TechCrunch

Google today announced one of the biggest updates to its search algorithm in recent years. By using new neural networking techniques to better understand the intentions behind queries, Google says it can now offer more relevant results for about one in ten searches in the U.S. in English (with support for other languages and locales coming later). For featured snippets, the update is already live globally. In the world of search updates, where algorithm changes are often far more subtle, an update that affects 10 percent of searches is a pretty big deal (and will surely keep the world's SEO experts up at night). Google notes that this update will work best for longer, more conversational queries -- and in many ways, that's how Google would really like you to search these days because it's easier to interpret a full sentence than a sequence of keywords.