RankBrain: Google's Behind-The-Scene Artificial Intelligence

RankBrain is Google's artificial intelligence (AI) that sorts search engine results when the search query is new or Google needs help understanding the query. The AI's purpose is to understand intent, not just specific keywords, by analyzing word relationships. For example, RankBrain understands words such as without and the, which are words that were ignored before. This is how RankBrain beat Google's human experts at selecting the most relevant results.

For SEO professionals, quality content is still vital, as are quality links, but RankBrain is in the top three of the most important ranking signals. Still, if you're putting out the best, most informative content possible, you don't have to change what you are doing.

You won't need to create separate pages targeting keywords that have the same meaning, such as women's clothes and ladies clothing; RankBrain knows the words mean the same thing. Your content will read naturally, something your visitors will appreciate. In the past, copywriters were stuck incorporating keywords such as air conditioners Houston into their content, which sounds unnatural.

Google uses its search engine, information from Android searches and its browser, Chrome, to gather data for RankBrain to analyze. The AI learns that if people immediately hit the back button, its guess was incorrect. If multiple people click on a link and stay there, it has found a good resource for that search query.

People who use Google's search engine are the real winners, which is no surprise; the majority of their revenue comes from advertising and advertisers depend on eyeballs. If your doing SEO for yourself or for a client, just concentrate on making your content more engaging and informative than your competitors. There is still a vast amount of keyword-stuffed content on the web that is torture to read, giving you a greater chance of securing a top spot in the SERPs if you have outstanding content. You'll also earn more backlinks this way.