RankBrain is a

machine learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of inquiry devoted to understanding and building methods that 'learn', that is, methods that leverage data to improve performance on some set of tasks. It is seen as a part of artificial intelligence. Machine ...

-based

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

algorithm, the use of which was confirmed by

Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...

on 26 October 2015. It helps Google to process search results and provide more relevant search results for users. In a 2015 interview, Google commented that RankBrain was the third most important factor in the ranking algorithm along with links and content. , "RankBrain was used for less than 15% of queries." The results show that RankBrain produces results that are well within 10% of the Google search engine engineer team. If RankBrain sees a word or phrase it isn’t familiar with, the machine can make a guess as to what words or phrases might have a similar meaning and filter the result accordingly, making it more effective at handling never-before-seen search queries or keywords. Search queries are sorted into

word vector In natural language processing (NLP), word embedding is a term used for the representation of words for text analysis, typically in the form of a real-valued vector that encodes the meaning of the word such that the words that are closer in the v ...

s, also known as “distributed representations,” which are close to each other in terms of linguistic similarity. RankBrain attempts to map this query into words (entities) or clusters of words that have the best chance of matching it. Therefore, RankBrain attempts to guess what people mean and records the results, which adapts the results to provide better user satisfaction. There are over 200 different ranking factors which make up the ranking algorithm, whose exact functions in the

Google algorithm PageRank (PR) is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank webpages, web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term "web page" and co-founder Larry Page. PageRank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. A ...

are not fully disclosed. Behind content and links, RankBrain is considered the third most important signal in determining ranking on Google search. Although Google has not admitted to any order of importance, only that RankBrain is one of the three most important of its search ranking signals. When offline, RankBrain is given batches of past searches and learns by matching search results. Studies showed how RankBrain better interpreted the relationships between words. This can include the use of

stop word Stop words are the words in a stop list (or ''stoplist'' or ''negative dictionary'') which are filtered out (i.e. stopped) before or after processing of natural language data (text) because they are insignificant. There is no single universal list ...

s in a search query ("the," "and," "without," etc.) words that were historically ignored previously by Google but are sometimes of a major importance to fully understanding the meaning or

intent Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ''a ...

behind a person’s search query. It’s also able to parse patterns between searches that are seemingly unconnected, to understand how those searches are similar to each other. Once RankBrain's results are verified by

's team, the system is updated and goes live again. Google has stated that it uses

tensor processing unit Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) is an AI accelerator application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) developed by Google for Artificial neural network, neural network machine learning, using Google's own TensorFlow software. Google began using TPUs ...

(TPU) ASICs for processing RankBrain requests.

Impact on digital marketing

RankBrain has allowed Google to speed up the algorithmic testing it does for keyword categories to attempt to choose the best content for any particular keyword search. This means that old methods of gaming the rankings with false signals are becoming less and less effective, and the highest quality content from a human perspective is being ranked higher in Google. RankBrain has helped

Hummingbird Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the biological family Trochilidae. With about 361 species and 113 genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but the vast majority of the species are found in the tropics aro ...

provide more accurate results because it can learn words and phrases it may not know. It also learns them specifically for the country, as well as language, in which a query is made. So, if one looks up a query with the word ''boot'' in it within the United States, one will get information on footwear. However, if the query comes through the UK, then the information could also be in regard to storage spaces in cars.

References

{{Google LLC Google Search Search engine optimization