- Evolution of Search Engine and Importance of SEO
Earlier, search engines used to decide the ranking of a website based only on links, keywords and content. But today, many new factors like website speed, mobile usability, semantic search are also considered. Google has now started understanding user behavior and satisfaction by using AI and machine learning, which plays a very big role in ranking. - Role of RankBrain and BERT
RankBrain: This is a machine learning algorithm that makes Google’s algorithms even better. Its job is to see how much a website matches the user’s intent.
BERT: Its full form is “Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers”. This helps Google understand natural language processing (NLP), so that Google can better understand the relationship between a query and content. - Personalization and AI-powered Search
Google now analyzes the user’s location, device, and search history along with the query. With the help of AI, Google now not only answers your current search, but can also predict your future searches.
- User Behavior Signals and SEO Impact
A big debate in the SEO industry was whether Google uses user behavior signals? Now it has been confirmed from a leaked document that Google analyzes:
Click-through rate (CTR) – How many people are clicking on a result
Dwell Time – How much time is the user spending on a page
Bounce Rate – Is the user coming back to the search results immediately?
All these signals tell Google how useful a website is.
- SpamBrain – AI-based Spam Prevention
Google’s SpamBrain algorithm is an AI-based spam detection system that:
Detects spammy links and paid backlinks
Identifies hacked websites and malicious content
Its main aim is to control unfair SEO practices.
- Future of Search with AI + AR
Now Google is not limited to just text and images, but is bringing new features using Augmented Reality (AR) and AI:
You can search for an object by taking a photo of it
You can ask questions related to it by uploading a video (2024 I/O conference announcement)
- Conclusion
If we compare the earlier search engines and today’s AI-driven search engines, we can see that Google has moved from keyword-based matching to AI-powered contextual search. Today SEO is not just a game of keywords, but has become a combination of user experience, intent and behavior analysis.
In the coming time, we will talk in more detail about new SEO techniques and changes in the visual appearance of search results. 🚀
