After being relatively quiet for several months, Google announced a broad core update and their plans for a new language model, called MUM. That’s a lot to digest from an SEO perspective! If you would like regular updates from Uprise Up on the world of digital marketing, follow us on Twitter.
Rollout of the June and July broad core updates
On 2nd June, Google announced a core algorithm update. This is a general update to Google’s search algorithm, with no indication provided of what could be affected. This time, the announcement mentioned that this update was being split in two, resulting in the June Core Update and the July Core Update, as not all of their planned improvements were ready for a June based rollout.
Over the next few weeks, Google has warned that although most sites won’t experience any changes, some could experience drops or gains as the update rolls out. However, they also noted that a few sites may notice changes this month that could then reverse in July due to the two-part nature of this core update.
Technically, this update was announced at the beginning of June, but we thought that this announcement was worth mentioning now so that you can be on the look-out for any changes to your content’s performance over the coming weeks. Please feel free to get in touch with us if you notice any particularly interesting side effects of the algorithm update!
Google announced their new language model: MUM
If we didn’t know it already, Google have confirmed this month that MUM’s the word. In this case, MUM stands for Multitask Unified Model and the technology has been designed to understand more complex search queries so that in future, it will take fewer searches for Google to understand the User’s intention.
At the moment, we don’t have a definitive date when MUM will be implemented, but Google has stated that it will ‘bring MUM-powered features and improvements to our products in the coming months and years.’
How will MUM work?
MUM uses Transformer Information and builds on the BERT update. Designed to be 1000 times better than BERT, Google claims that the technology will be able to understand and generate language. MUM is also multimodal, so it understands information across text and images. In future, Google also hopes that it will have the capacity to understand audio and video. In layman’s terms, this essentially means that Google will be more able to understand the language and context surrounding a search query, with the aim of being able to answer more complicated user queries in fewer searches.
Another aspect of the product that could have a dramatic impact on SEO in years to come is the fact that MUM aims to remove the language barriers that currently exist in search. As MUM can understand multiple languages, when a user submits a query, it will look for the most relevant content in any language. Therefore, SERP results could now show webpages written in different languages and translated back into the into the User’s native tongue. The impact of this could be huge, especially for companies seeking to attract an international audience!
What does this mean for SEO?
It is unclear how the SERP will be affected by these changes overall. MUM will use the most relevant content, whether that’s images or articles written in multiple languages to inform the different aspects of its answer. We don’t yet know how this will affect the search results page. For these complex searches, how will MUM determine which source of information or which part of the answer is the most relevant to the user? Is our current model of having 10 ranked answers becoming outdated?
After the MUM update was announced, users took to Reddit to voice these concerns. However, Google’s John Müller tried to alleviate worry by stressing that he didn’t ‘really see how this would reduce the need for SEO. Things always develop… and yet the SEO people still have enough to do.’ So, whilst the impact of MUM is still uncertain, what is for certain is that SEOs should be prepared for the changes that MUM could bring in the future and adapt their processes accordingly.
Google continues to roll out ‘About this result’ worldwide
Google announced its intentions to make us all more judicious in February 2021 with the ‘About This Result’ feature. The tool is designed to help Users determine credible and reliable information at a time when ‘fake news’ hides around every corner. ‘About This Result’ has been rolling out since then but in May, Google officially announced that they had started implementing this feature to all English results worldwide.
They have also promised to implement this feature to other languages in the future and they have teased more details that will be included within the tool later in the year, such as related articles, what other sources say about the site and how the site describes itself. We are excited to see how the expanded use of this tool will help or hinder websites based on Google’s added votes of confidence or concern.
Did we miss anything?
If there was anything else that happened in May that caught your eye, feel free to tweet us at upriseUPSEM, email us at hello@upriseup.co.uk, or simply send us a message through our contact page. We’d love to hear from you.
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