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 you have been keeping an eye on Twitter SEO over the past week you’ll have likely noticed an uptick in the number of gifs and images featuring the character Bert (and sometimes Ernie) from Sesame Street.

This is because, last week Google announced an imminent algorithmic update would be rolling out, impacting 10% of queries in search results, and also affect featured snippet results in countries where they were present; which is not trivial.

The update is named Google BERT (Hence the Sesame Street connection – and the gifs).

Google describes BERT as the largest change to its search system since the company introduced RankBrain, almost five years ago, and probably one of the largest changes in search ever.

The news of BERT’s arrival and its impending impact has caused a stir in the SEO community, along with some confusion as to what BERT does, and what it means for the industry overall.

With this in mind, let’s take a look at what BERT is, BERT’s background, the need for BERT and the challenges it aims to resolve, the current situation (i.e. what it means for SEO), and where things might be headed.