Our SEO expert, Tom Williams, is back with another roundup of the latest SEO news stories. From Google releasing a movie to a possible algorithm update in November, read more.

SEO News: The BERT algorithm has a code name – DeepRank!

There’s been plenty happening in the world of SEO just recently. This week, we take a look at the code name Google have given to the BERT algorithm, as well as a move that has been released providing detail on how search works – Google have to clarify just what they meant by ‘passage indexing’.

How Does Search Work? Google has Released a Movie!

Yes, Google has released a movie all about how search works and the challenges they have faced over the years! The movie is called - "Trillions of Questions, No Easy Answers: A (home) movie about how Google Search works."

The movie includes things such as rankings, quality raters, evaluations, EAT, BERT, data centers, spam and a lot more. There are some Googlers in this movie that you may be familiar with, but also some that are higher up in the company.

I am definitely going to give this a watch and I recommend you do as well!

Codename for the BERT Algorithm is DeepRank

The BERT algorithm was first announced by Google back in 2019, and just recently they provided an update to say that BERT is now used for almost every single English based query.

Within the new movie they have released, Google has provided their internal project name for this algorithm - DeepRank.

Why have they given the algorithm this name internally? Well they referenced the deep learning methods used within the BERT algorithm along with ranking aspect of search. They also said it’s because they thought ‘DeepRank’ sounded cool.

If you want to know a little more about how this project started then you should check out the movie, they discuss this around the 44 minute mark.

Passage Indexing - Google clarify that it’s Ranking not Indexing related

It was announced last month that Google can now index parts of a page instead of all content on a page.

However, since that announcement there has been come confusion amongst the SEO community. Google called it ‘passage INDEXING’ but it’s not about indexing, it’s actually related to ranking – yeah, confusing right?

So it turns out Google isn’t indexing individual passages of content like we thought was going to be the case. They are still indexing pages as they always have but they will now consider passages from pages as an additional ranking factor.

There has then been some further information shared and Google re-iterated that it’s not a core update, it’s not about indexing and you don’t have to optimise for it.

Possible Google Algorithm Update - November 4th

Over the past number of days a lot of people within the SEO industry have been chatting about ranking fluctuations and a possible algorithm update.

The chatter started around 3^rd of November and continued during 4^th and 5^th of November. Nothing has been confirmed by Google but looking at the SERP fluctuation tools and various forums, it seems like something may have been happening.

Have you seen any ranking fluctuations over the last couple of weeks? Tweet us @clickthrough.

That brings us to the end of this week’s roundup. I hope you’ve enjoyed catching-up with all the latest SEO news!

If you want to discuss any of the stories included in this week's SEO news roundup, book in a conversation with our experts today.