In this episode of In-Ear Insights, Katie and Chris discuss the latest changes to Google’s query processing using the BERT natural language processing pre-trained model, its impact on SEO, and how to holistically address the impact of machine learning models on your overall marketing planning.

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Machine-Generated Transcript

What follows is an AI-generated transcript. The transcript may contain errors and is not a substitute for listening to the episode.

Christopher Penn

In today’s episode of In-Ear Insights, we are talking about all things 2020, the Google BERT SEO update, and so much more. It has been a just absolutely crazy last seven days as we record this, as Google rolled out its new search query methodology using their bi directional encoding representations for Transformers a mouthful, known as BERT play on the Sesame Street characters. And in the net change and there’s an entire blog post over at Trust insights.ai should just go and read that post because it’s, you know, there’s no point reading the whole thing out loud. But what this is, why it matters and how to adapt port including the 10 step process that we recommend. But the short version is this Google’s search queries now better understand context. If I say for example, to Google, OK, Google, where’s the nearest espresso shop? It’s open right now. The ability for the algorithm to understand that espresso is tech sama, taxonomic Lee related to coffee. And then to look up local coffee shops, even if my coffee shops website doesn’t necessarily include the word espresso or feature prominently, the algorithm will know to bring that up and around there. Now part of that also means that Google has to use BERT or another natural language processing technology like it to understand the context of the web page to match it back to what people are searching for. So this makes for much more human like search queries. It allows for longer search queries. It allows for more natural language, particularly with voice interfaces, which is what this is really intended for. But it also means for a lot of marketers who have created content that is keyword optimized, and you know, very stilted you know, the old SEO joke, an SEO expert walks into a bar pub tavern, so on and so forth. It means that a lot of our content was done the old way. may not be as relevant. So combine that with every client. So talking about 2020 planning what they should be doing, Katie, I think we have kind of an interesting mix of items in the in the cauldron, although Halloween is now over, so it’s not as relevant.

Katie Robbert

Yeah, there’s a lot going on. And I think, you know, everybody right now is scrambling to figure out what the heck am I going to do in 2020. January is not that far away, it’s less than two months away. Everybody sees January 1 as that fresh start, I can, you know, forget everything I did last year, and just start fresh. And honestly, I’ve never believed that that was a great way to think about it. But I’m not going to be able to change a whole culture from thinking that this certain day resets everything. It doesn’t, it doesn’t, it resets budgets. it resets. You know, for a lot of people just reset expectations and so One of the things that we’re working on, that we’re helping other marketers work on is, what the heck am I going to do when January 1 rolls around? And I think that the conversation about Google’s algorithm change with their natural language processing should be a part of that. Now, you know, the change isn’t that old. In terms of their announcement, they’ve been obviously working on it for a wh