What Does It Mean For SEO:
Google announced yesterday that they were adding another layer to their already complicated ranking algorithm. This time, they were focusing on machine learning and are calling this update, RankBrain.
As I covered in a recent article, machine learning has been making inroads into the search algorithms for quite some time now. Apple has publicly announced their own forays into search and machine learning, and Bing has talked about it extensively.
And at our digital agency we’re always paranoid about changes Google makes to their algorithm. So, we jumped right in when we heard the news and tried to decipher what all of this means for marketers.
But what are we really talking about when we discuss machine learning and the search engine algorithms?
Still Human Run
Even though we’d like to think that a company worth 100’s of billions of dollars, like Google and Apple, should have advanced technologies that us mere mortals haven’t even heard of, the truth of the matter is, they still have a lot of manual processes and antiquated code wrapped up into their operating systems and search algorithms.
So, while they may not have developed warp drive yet, they have been trying to remove the human element from their search algorithms. The reason being is that humans can only process what they know and what they recognize. And gathering data to learn from is a very manual process.
This means that all of the rules that currently govern how the search algorithm works, from link tracking, content crawling, and the hundreds of other activities, have all been written by a human being. And that human being wrote that rule because they recognized a pattern and adjusted the algorithm accordingly.
And while humans are great at recognizing patterns, we’re still very slow at doing this. Thus, the search companies have been enlisting machines to help write and govern the rules that run the algorithms. But machines are not great at recognizing patterns. Yes, they’re much faster than humans at almost everything, but they still struggle with recognizing patterns and understanding how those patterns interact with the big picture.
RankBrain
So, if a machine can’t run the system on its own, what will RankBrain really do? In short, it will look for patterns that humans have programmed it to look for and make pre-determined changes and adjustments based on the pattern recognition.
In truth, this isn’t true machine intelligence, it’s still a computer – albeit an incredibly powerful one – running a set of predetermined protocols and taking predetermined actions. Now, there may be some level of learning going on in the system, which theoretically would allow RankBrain to evolve its processes gradually over time. But you can rest assured that a human will still be spot-checking that evolution and making sure everything is progressing as it should.
Third Most Important Signal
Google has said that they consider the signals coming from RankBrain to be the third most important signal they base their rankings on. For a full list, you can read this great article on Search Engine Land by Danny Sullivan.
But what exactly is RankBrain tracking and improving? For the most part, it will be looking at intent. It will ask, “What was the intent of this search?”
Meaning, that if you searched for “homes in San Diego” Google’s algorithm already has a synonym code in place that will bring up results that match for “houses in San Diego” as well. But that line of code was written by a human. The hope is that as the billions of searches come in every day, RankBrain will track what users are clicking on and will begin making these correlations without a human having to manually write it into the code.
This will help Google keep up with trending topics, slang, and new queries that it hasn’t encountered before.
What Does This Mean For SEO?
Honestly, not a whole lot just yet. This is an algorithm update that helps the users and gives them a better experience. But it doesn’t really change how marketers should be tackling their SEO. They should still be focusing on well-designed pages that load quickly and give a great user experience. Content is still as important as ever. And every other SEO best practice should still be followed.
However, in the future, the increase in machine learning technologies will make the algorithm more agile and will begin to reward the marketers who are doing SEO the right way more and more. So, it’s a great day for people who practice SEO the right way and often get frustrated that old spammy tactics still produce results for their competitors. It’s just a matter of time before the machines are fully integrated and then finally they’ll be able to stay ahead of their human counterparts.
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Google announced yesterday that they were adding another layer to their already complicated ranking algorithm. This time, they were focusing on machine learning and are calling this update, RankBrain.
As I covered in a recent article, machine learning has been making inroads into the search algorithms for quite some time now. Apple has publicly announced their own forays into search and machine learning, and Bing has talked about it extensively.
And at our digital agency we’re always paranoid about changes Google makes to their algorithm. So, we jumped right in when we heard the news and tried to decipher what all of this means for marketers.
But what are we really talking about when we discuss machine learning and the search engine algorithms?
Still Human Run
Even though we’d like to think that a company worth 100’s of billions of dollars, like Google and Apple, should have advanced technologies that us mere mortals haven’t even heard of, the truth of the matter is, they still have a lot of manual processes and antiquated code wrapped up into their operating systems and search algorithms.
So, while they may not have developed warp drive yet, they have been trying to remove the human element from their search algorithms. The reason being is that humans can only process what they know and what they recognize. And gathering data to learn from is a very manual process.
This means that all of the rules that currently govern how the search algorithm works, from link tracking, content crawling, and the hundreds of other activities, have all been written by a human being. And that human being wrote that rule because they recognized a pattern and adjusted the algorithm accordingly.
And while humans are great at recognizing patterns, we’re still very slow at doing this. Thus, the search companies have been enlisting machines to help write and govern the rules that run the algorithms. But machines are not great at recognizing patterns. Yes, they’re much faster than humans at almost everything, but they still struggle with recognizing patterns and understanding how those patterns interact with the big picture.
RankBrain
So, if a machine can’t run the system on its own, what will RankBrain really do? In short, it will look for patterns that humans have programmed it to look for and make pre-determined changes and adjustments based on the pattern recognition.
In truth, this isn’t true machine intelligence, it’s still a computer – albeit an incredibly powerful one – running a set of predetermined protocols and taking predetermined actions. Now, there may be some level of learning going on in the system, which theoretically would allow RankBrain to evolve its processes gradually over time. But you can rest assured that a human will still be spot-checking that evolution and making sure everything is progressing as it should.
Third Most Important Signal
Google has said that they consider the signals coming from RankBrain to be the third most important signal they base their rankings on. For a full list, you can read this great article on Search Engine Land by Danny Sullivan.
But what exactly is RankBrain tracking and improving? For the most part, it will be looking at intent. It will ask, “What was the intent of this search?”
Meaning, that if you searched for “homes in San Diego” Google’s algorithm already has a synonym code in place that will bring up results that match for “houses in San Diego” as well. But that line of code was written by a human. The hope is that as the billions of searches come in every day, RankBrain will track what users are clicking on and will begin making these correlations without a human having to manually write it into the code.
This will help Google keep up with trending topics, slang, and new queries that it hasn’t encountered before.
What Does This Mean For SEO?
Honestly, not a whole lot just yet. This is an algorithm update that helps the users and gives them a better experience. But it doesn’t really change how marketers should be tackling their SEO. They should still be focusing on well-designed pages that load quickly and give a great user experience. Content is still as important as ever. And every other SEO best practice should still be followed.
However, in the future, the increase in machine learning technologies will make the algorithm more agile and will begin to reward the marketers who are doing SEO the right way more and more. So, it’s a great day for people who practice SEO the right way and often get frustrated that old spammy tactics still produce results for their competitors. It’s just a matter of time before the machines are fully integrated and then finally they’ll be able to stay ahead of their human counterparts.
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