- Will RankBrain have a major impact on SEO
RankBrain can be touted as Google’s attempt to foray into the world of artificial intelligence or machine learning. It (RankBrain) is the newest addition to Google’s existing layer of algorithms. Machine learning has gained significant momentum in recent years and with RankBrain Google endeavors to handle its “complicated” searches in a more efficient fashion. The search engine giant is using this particular algorithm to deal with the search terms it has never encountered before. Now, before a digital marketing agency starts gauging its impact on Search Engine Optimization, it is very important to ensure that one has a clear understanding of how it works and why exactly it has been introduced. Read on to find out more in this regard.
What should you find out about RankBrain? Fundamentals of this update
Jack Clark (from Bloomberg) caught up with Google’s research scientist Greg Corrado, who explained that if RankBrain encounters a completely new word or phrase, it will be able to guess words or phrases having similar meaning and present a search result in accordance. Content crawling and link tracking are among a few thousand activities that govern search results. And, all these rules have been written by human beings as per their recognition of a pattern and adjustment of the algorithm in accordance. With RankBrain, now machines themselves will recognize the patterns pre-programmed by humans and present search results in accordance. The machines are still unable to write rules on their own. However, we have clearly entered an age where they are capable of identifying prefixed protocols and rendering results in accordance. Around 15% of the phrases that have not really been encountered by the search engine before can now be easily deciphered by it (i.e. Google)—thanks to RankBrain.
RankBrain is considered to be the third most important signal by Google
For Google, RankBrain counts for the third most important signal that it will consider while delivering search results though, the search engine giant has never really divulged what the first two factors are. There are presumably around 200 signals that are taken into view. On closer evaluation there are around ten thousand sub-signals of these signals. Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land) believes that links and words make for the first two signals. According to Sullivan, Google, considers the number of links as votes. The words of pages and those entered in search boxes are the probable second most important signal considered by the search engine giant. RankBrain will primarily take the intent of search in to account. Today, if you searching with “dress stores in California”, you might as well be offered related search results “clothing stores in California”. This happens due to the synonym code existing in the system—which, of course, has been written by the humans.
Will RankBrain affect Search Engine Optimization in any Way? Find out the details
As far as the impact of RankBrain on SEO is concerned, let us tell you that marketers should not really have to bring out major changes in their strategies. They should continue doing what they did to bolster rankings— concentrating on the creation of well-designed and easily navigable pages, great content among others. Those who still rely on spammy tactics will continue to languish at the bottom of the search engines.
Do you remember those days when Google used to provide results for only the exact query submitted? For instance, if you searched with the word “house” you would only get results on “house” and not even “houses” since Google was unable to identify them as words with almost same meanings (these two are technically two different words). However, with “stemming” Google could identify variations of same word like “run” and “running”. With the introduction of “Knowledge Graph” (in 2012) Google could actually start establishing connections between “people” and “things”. For instance, if you had searched with the word “Bill Clinton” it would only offer you pages with spelling similar to Bill Clinton. Today, the search engine has actually been able to realize that Bill Clinton is a real person with real connections and that he was the former president of the United States of America. RankBrain actually looks forward to facilitating search for words that Google has not encountered yet.
