BERT Goes Global 

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From its U.S. roll-out back in October, the BERT update is now launched globally, according to Google. The largest search engine has announced via Twitter that BERT is now working globally wherever Google is accessible. So far, BERT is available in 72 languages, though it may still be exclusive to 10% of all searches.

What is BERT?

BERT is a Google algorithm that stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers. It’s a form of deep-learning technology that interprets search queries based on each word’s relation to each other.

That way, Google can provide better search results based on the relevance of web pages to the entered query.

Take note that Google said back in October that it will only apply to 10% of all searches. It’s expected to stay that way even on its global roll-out.

Overall, BERT improves the interpretation of search queries. This benefits both the website owners and its users.

How will it affect international searches?

With BERT working globally, your pages may not rank the same for some keywords. Still, this also means that the quality of search results will be improved. Also, traffic will be directed to the most relevant web pages.

For website owners, this means that they will receive highly-converting traffic by losing low-quality traffic.

Also, BERT will affect international featured snippets. If your website has rich snippets before, it may not be generated now that BERT is in place. Still, you can optimize your pages better to increase the likelihood of regaining the snippet.

Anyway, this only applies to countries where rich snippets are available.

BERT brings in positive change

Google updates could be daunting, but most of it brings positive change. This is the same thing with BERT. Since search results will improve, internet users will be offered results that they are more likely to patronize.

Aside from that, BERT can learn from other languages as a way of making improvements in the English language search. This is the same thing for different languages.

It improves how Google interprets the context of each search. With this, your web pages will rank better on searches where it’s deemed the most relevant by BERT.

What should you do?

Now that BERT is in full effect, the question now is, what should we do about this update? Nothing, actually. BERT is an algorithm update. It doesn’t aim to penalize any website. Although your ranking or snippets may be affected, you can optimize just the same.

There’s no preparation or response needed here. BERT is directed to Google’s platform and not to specific websites. Also, BERT doesn’t give benefits to a specific group of websites.

If you want to keep up with this update, the only thing you have to do is to create unique, high-quality, relevant, and compelling content.

Final words 

Google considers the BERT update as one of the biggest strides in search for the past five years. It’s a big thing, but website owners don’t need to panic. As long as you’re producing high-quality content and optimizing your website well, there’s nothing to be worried about.