Google’s search algorithm updates and what these could mean for you

Google has announced new search algorithm updates in the past week, with key updates to its BERT algorithm, and improvements to spelling, indexing, subtopics and several other features now in place to build ‘a more helpful Google’.

The new updates are all geared around gaining an even better understanding of a user’s query and subsequently rank relevant results in return.

We’ve rounded up everything you need to know.

UPDATES TO BERT

The BERT algorithm has been updated to now apply to almost all queries, up from 10%. Google cites a deep investment into language research and, after last year introducing BERT language understanding systems, has revealed BERT is now used in ‘nearly every’ query in English. 

This means BERT will now understand natural language and question queries even better.

What to consider: It’s a big jump to go from 10% of queries to almost all queries! BERT is another algorithm that Google tells us we can’t optimise for, and there’s a lot of mystery around how it impacts results.

Fundamentally, this algorithm focuses on natural language and seeks to understand queries, suggesting that Google will become more receptive to content written in a conversational manner and be able to better answer questions. 

BERT also deals with query ambiguity, words with multiple meanings and homonyms – writing within the full context of a topic should be beneficial for both text and voice search.

IMPROVED SPELLING

An improved spelling algorithm is now in place. This uses a deeper neural net to decipher misspellings, something which Google believes will see greater improvement to spelling than all of their improvements from over the last five years. Good news for the 10% of search queries misspelled each and every day! What to consider: Google says this is a better update to their spelling algorithm than all other updates in the last 5 years, and that it will improve their understanding of the context of misspellings. This might help surface sites for more misspelt queries, particularly around brand misspellings.

INDEXING PASSAGES

We are set to see a new ability to index “passages” from pages to improve results for detailed queries. This will involve a much better understanding of the relevancy of specific passages and will provide more accurate results for queries where the relevant answer might be confined to one paragraph deep within content.

This has been introduced to tackle the specific searches that Google often found the hardest to get right. This is set to be rolled out next month and will impact 7% queries. Find out more on this in Search Engine Land’s recent post.

What to consider: The announcement of ‘passage indexing’ is already infamous within the SEO community due to the semantics around ‘indexing’. Google has had to quickly announce that passages of text aren’t being indexed independently of a wider page as implied, but that passage indexing is actually a ranking change. 

It does mean that passages of text from a page of content can be surfaced in search results when hyper-relevant to a query, even if the wider page context isn’t focused on that query or topic. It seeks to find needles in haystacks.

This could have an impact on CTRs of affected queries – if an obscure query is answered within the search result there is no reason to click through, but if the answer wouldn’t have otherwise surfaced it at least raises awareness of the brand.

It also means that content producers can write in depth across many topics within one piece of content – there is less concern about being hyper-focused on one topic in the knowledge that individual passages can be ranked.

A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF SUBTOPICS

We will begin to see a greater, more diverse range of content delivered when searching for broader topics. Google is applying neural nets to help understand subtopics around an interest. We should see this rolled out by the end of the year.

What to consider: This is a consumer focused update and it will be interesting to see its appearance in situ when rolled out. The focus is on suggestions around broader topics, so site owners should ensure that their content and categories incorporate relevant sub-categories to enhance the possibility of this content being surfaced.

If you found this update useful, check out our latest blog posts for the latest news, and if you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do for your brand, get in touch with the team today.

SEO Market Updates: September 2020

Join Fusion’s SEO team as we round up last month’s major industry updates.

Googlebot to start crawling over HTTP/2

Google are bringing an update to Googlebot, set to be released in November. This update will allow Googlebot to crawl pages using HTTP/2.

For more information on this update, please see our recent dedicated blog post.

Google Release free shopping listings

Google have announced the release of free shopping listings for UK users. Free shopping listings were originally released to US users in April 2020, with plans to release this worldwide by mid-October.

In order to display products in these free Google shopping listings, users will need to opt in when signing up to Google Merchant Centre. For existing users, enable this option by navigation to Growth > Manage Programs > Surfaces Across Google.

Google experience canonicalization & indexing issues

Google confirmed they had been experiencing issues in September, in regards to canonicalization and mobile indexing.

As mentioned in Google’s tweet, both issues caused some pages to not be indexed. Regardless of the indexing issues, Google have confirmed that no action is required from site owners to resolve these issue. This is set to be fixed by Google.

Google will be providing updates on the progress of these issues being resolved in the above twitter thread.

Google’s new news showcase

Google have announced the release of a news showcase. This will be available soon on Google News and iOS, and will also be added to Google Search and Discover in the future.

This showcase will display news segments from Google approved publishers. Around 200 leading publications across Germany, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, the UK and Australia are currently signed partners. This showcase is currently available to users in Germany and Brazil, and will be rolled out worldwide at a later date.

If you found this update useful, check out our latest blog posts for the latest news, and if you’re interested in finding out more about what we can do for your brand, get in touch with the team today.