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BERT is rolling out to Google search in over 70 languages

The algorithm was first introduced to search in October.

George Nguyen on December 9, 2019 at 5:48 pm

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BERT, the natural language processing algorithm that launched on English language queries in October, is now coming to over 70 languages globally, Google announced on Monday. Previously, BERT was only applied to featured snippets in languages other than English.

An example of a featured snippet for the query “Parking on a hill with no curb” before and after BERT is applied. In the past, queries such as this would confuse Google’s system and it would place too much emphasis on “curb” and ignore the word “no,” not understanding how important it was to appropriately addressing the query, the company has said. Source: Google.

Why we care

With regards to search engines, BERT is designed to better understand the intent behind a user’s query, and Google has said that 10% of all searches are impacted by the BERT update. Now that the algorithm is receiving a worldwide roll out, Google search in those 70+ other languages should benefit from BERT’s language processing capabilities.

More on BERT

Here are some additional resources to help you understand BERT’s significance and why you can’t optimize for it.

About The Author

George Nguyen

George Nguyen is an Associate Editor at Third Door Media. His background is in content marketing, journalism, and storytelling.