Have You Heard of Google's BERT Algorithm?

When Google rolled out its BERT update in late 2019, it caused a fair bit of nervous chatter among business owners: how will this affect my content, my rankings, my traffic? Years on, BERT is worth understanding not because you can optimise for it — you can't — but because it was one of the first big steps towards search understanding language the way people actually use it. That same shift now underpins the AI answer engines we all use today, so the lessons still apply. Here's what BERT is and how to write content that works with it.

What the BERT algorithm is

BERT stands for Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers — a mouthful, but the idea is simple enough. It's a neural-network technique that helps Google better understand natural language, especially conversational phrasing and longer, more specific searches rather than one- or two-word queries. When Google understands a search more accurately, it can serve a more useful result. BERT was trained on an enormous amount of text, and it marked a genuine leap in how well machines could grasp the nuance in everyday language.

Why context changed everything

Before BERT, search leaned heavily on the main keywords in a query and could miss the little words that change everything. Google's own example: a search about a Brazilian traveller needing a visa to visit the US. Older systems latched onto "US", "Brazil" and "visa" and got the direction backwards. BERT understood that the tiny word "to" mattered enormously and returned the right answer. That's the heart of it — search moved from matching strings to understanding meaning. For you, it means the days of stuffing pages with exact-match keywords are well and truly over.

How to write content that works

The good news is there's no clever tactic to chase here — you write for people. Lean into long-tail, conversational phrasing that mirrors how your customers actually ask questions. Keep your content specific and to the point — conversational doesn't mean rambling. Don't fret about length; Google judges relevance, quality and value, not word count, so use exactly as many words as the topic needs. Above all, make it genuinely helpful: audience-centred, current and easy to absorb. As Google's team has long said, write content for users, not search engines.

BERT and site performance

BERT analyses search queries, not your website, so there's nothing to "fix" on your pages for it directly. But you can always improve the overall quality of your site to support your rankings. Speed things up — page speed is a confirmed ranking factor, and a fast site gives everyone a better experience. Trim unnecessary requests so pages render quickly, and compress your images so they're not dragging load times down. None of this is about pleasing BERT; it's about running a fast, well-built site that serves visitors well. Our technical SEO work covers exactly this kind of tuning.

From BERT to AI answer engines

Here's why BERT still matters in 2026: it was an early move towards the deep language understanding that now powers Google AI Overviews and tools like ChatGPT. These AI answer engines summarise and cite content the same way BERT rewarded it — by understanding intent and pulling from pages that answer questions clearly and naturally. So if you've been writing genuinely helpful, well-structured content all along, you're already in good shape for AI search. The principles haven't changed; the technology has simply caught up with them.

The short version: don't panic about BERT, and don't try to game it. Provide authentic, helpful information that reads naturally and is written for people, and you'll do well by BERT, by Google today, and by the AI answer engines shaping search next. If you'd like help with your content and SEO plan, get in touch — we're always happy to chat.