Google RankBrain, IoT SEO & The Quantum A.I. Lab
Google RankBrain reveals the future of search and the death of SEO as we know it. The answer lies to Google Quantum A.I. Lab Team.
For Google to make sense of the world it needs to understand more of it. Search engines must go beyond mere keywords and related terms. The real world is a complicated place with way more data than text.
The Future Of Google Search Is Artificial Intelligence
Google is facing two issues. The ever increasing complexity and noise thanks to smartphones and broadband. The lack of a high quality and real-time social graph. This is where RankBrain and Google’s artificial intelligence kick in.
Google Search Before BrainRank
Let’s take a step back and see what Google has been doing the last few of years.
At first Google tried to reduce spam and noise. Penguin and Panda search algorithms took care of that. An improved algorithm, named Hummingbird, followed. Introduced about two years ago, Hummingbird aimed at conversational search. A more natural way to search.
The year is 2013 and Google announced its quantum computer deal with D-Wave. This first version used 512 qubits.
Fast forward to 2015. A series of search improvements and important announcements come from Google. In early 2015 Google introduced the “People also ask” feature. This is the first clear sign of Google’s more human side.
Here’s an example of how People also ask works. Searching for “google penguin” produces a bunch of results. On top of the usual results Google offers the following:
- When is the next Google update?
- What is the penguin update?
- When will the next Penguin update be?
Note the difference between these questions and the Related Searches feature. Here’s how the searches related to google penguin look:
- google penguin 2015
- google penguin checker
- google penguin algorithm
- google penguin seo
- google penguin recovery
- google penguin seo strategy
- google penguin update seo
- google penguin update recovery
Google Search In The BrainRank Age
What is the connection with RankBrain you might ask. Bear with me, we are getting there.
At the end of September 2015, Google announced an upgrade to its quantum computer. The Google Quantum A.I. Lab Team got a new toy. The new computer, D-Wave 2X, uses more than 1.000 qubits.
RankBrain came out of nowhere or so it seems. The timing of the announcement follows a pattern. Google announced RankBrain a month after its upgrade to D-Wave 2X. Two years after Hummingbird. Which came two years after Panda and Penguin.
The Internet of Things And SEO
RankBrain is Google’s attempt to build and understand a high quality, real-time social graph without owning it.
RankBrain will take some time to show off its potential. This is where the Internet of Things comes in. IoT will be Google’s machine learning best friend. Smartphones, smart houses and a bunch of other sensors will feed Google with context. Do Android, Nest, cars and smartwatches ring a bell? This is Google’s best bet to beat Facebook.
RankBrain will try to make sense of everything and serve super personalized search results. This effort goes well beyond keywords and text. It’s about our own lives. How active we are. Where we hang out. How much sleep we get. That’s why SEO as we know it’s about to die. That’s why Google’s Quantum A.I. Lab will be increasingly important for the future of the company and the new era of SEO.
Google’s Machine Learning Code Consumes The Most Computing Power
In a recent profile of John Giannandrea, Google’s artificial intelligence chief, the article mentions. “But word recognition, he realized, was just a small piece of the puzzle of computer-human interaction. In 2005, Giannandrea founded Metaweb, which catalogued connections between not just words but objects. Google bought it in 2010”. According to Fortune, “In 2015 the company’s machine-learning code consumed the most computing power of Google’s systems”. According to Giannandrea, “the holy grail is language understanding and summary”.
SEO of IoT is just around the corner. Are you ready?
Machine Learning: Making Sense of a Messy World
If you are not yet convinced how important is Artificial Intelligence for Google, watch this video. It was just release, almost 24 hours after this post went live. It shows the effort Google is putting to understand the world through Artificial Intelligence and Machine Leaning.
From the description of the video: “The world is filled with things that most of us are able to understand and react to without much thought… a stop sign partially covered by snow is still a stop sign… a chair that’s five times bigger than usual, is still a place to sit. But for computers, the world is often messy and complicated. Google engineers and researchers discuss how machine learning is beginning to make computers, and many of the things we use them for (maps, search, recommending videos, translations), better”.
Google is exploring all sorts of different ways in the Machine Learning and AI world. Pattern recognition, Artificial Neural Networks, Reinforcement learning, Statistical Inference, Probabilistic machine learning, Supervised learning, Unsupervised learning, Ensemble algorithms, Clustering.
According to Google, we are already using the fruits of this process. Machine learning and artificial intelligence are used in detective spam. Giving directions on Google maps and translating text on the Google translate app. We now have RankBrain for Google search and soon for the Internet of Things. Just wait. It’s coming and it will change the web and SEO as we know it.