Google’s new artificial intelligence algo, RankBrain is definitely interesting (all the details about RankBrain can be found here).  We have reached out to 9 industry experts to get their reactions about RankBrain and what it means.  Here is what they had to say.

Glenn Gabe, G-Squared Interactive

There’s been a lot of talk in the SEO industry over the past 12-24 months about algorithms that could potentially learn and how those algorithms could impact the search results. Well, with yesterday’s article about RankBrain, we got our first glimpse of how Google’s AI algorithms could tangibly impact the SERPs.

For now, it seems that RankBrain is helping Google handle the 15% of queries per day that have never been seen before. That’s important, but it’s just the beginning. Search algorithms that can potentially learn on their own can help Google in many ways. The idea of self-learning algos is both amazing and scary to think about (on multiple levels).

The journalist who interviewed Google and wrote the article, Jack Clark, explained to me on Twitter that RankBrain cannot learn on its own yet. It needs to be retrained by engineers at the moment. But what happens when algorithms are unleashed on the web that can learn on the fly based on the billions of queries being performed each day globally?

For example, what if quality and webspam algorithms are continually learning new tactics being used to game the system? Think about new Panda and Penguin algorithms that are constantly being fed new information, continually analyzing user engagement, and finding new exploits. They might understand aggressive advertising and how certain situations frustrate users (across devices). And much, much more.

When that happens, not even Google’s engineers will fully understand how each algorithm works. I asked Google’s Gary Illyes that specific question yesterday via Twitter and he explained that’s not how RankBrain is working yet. But let’s face it, we know that RankBrain (and other AI algorithms) will be able to work like that in the future.

The SEO community (including myself) has been complaining about extended rollouts and crossing algorithms, but we should be careful what we wish for. When we have real-time, crossing algorithms that can also learn on the fly, we might just want those extended rollouts back. And unlike in the movies, we won’t have Arnold Schwarzenegger to save us. Wait, I’m going to reach out to him today. I’ll let you know how it goes. 🙂

Michael Bonfils, SEM International

The English language has over 1M words and Googles technology was built upon the English language. The semantic meaning and interpretation of words evaluated via Google’s big data sets, can be done in English because of the amount of users inquiries (amount of data), behavior patterns, etc allow for Google to figure it out.

However, I am stumped on how it would figure out the proper interpretation of German grammar, or romance languages in sparsely populated countries. Will Google know when someone in France uses a “Fridgedaire” instead of the proper word for refrigerator?  Or recognize that 50 different arabic dialects call “camel” a different word.

There are so many factors when it comes to multilingual yet when does it roll out in those countries and who is monitoring the AI to make sure it doesn’t give strange results?

Marie Haynes, Marie Haynes Consulting

I’ve suspected for some time now that the Panda algorithm is shifting from being heavily technically focused to now being more and more based on overall user happiness with a site. In the past, clearing out thin content could often cause a Panda recovery. But now more and more we need to clear out thin content AND make the site incredible for users in order to move the needle.

Many have argued that this couldn’t be happening because Google doesn’t use Google Analytics data. But, if machine learning is increasingly deciding which sites users are preferring, then it makes sense to me that Google would use this kind of data in Panda calculations.

It’s always been important to have a technically sound site but I believe that RankBrain is allowing Google to learn which sites are truly the most satisfying for users.

Dave Davies, Beanstalk IM

The fact that we didn’t know that RankBrain existed until told negates any instinctive issues we might have with AI or computer interpretation of intent. Quite honestly I was a bit surprised to find out it was only within the last few months that RankBrain was impacting results and from both a user standpoint and SEO standpoint it has a lot of advantages.

When I think of whether a computer or Donald Trump is going to be better at formulating a result that matches my intent I immediately realize the benefited of a unbiased AI determining what ranks.  When I further think of things from an SEO standpoint and consider the shock-and-awe of human-driven Google updates vs the everflux updates inherent in a computer-generated algorithm and their predictability I’d certainly prefer the algorithm-driven version.

All-in-all I’m not surprised at the announcement.  It makes perfect sense in the evolution of what Google is and does and I’m just glad to know they’re testing it on the relatively small scale they are.  What will be truly interesting will be watching them tweak it for their full algorithm.

Paul Macnamara, Paul Macnamara SEO

Rankbrain appears to be more of a shift in the way queries are processed much like Hummingbird was. While Hummingbird was a huge step forward in Google better understanding user intent, RankBrain is taking it to another level by using AI by way of machine learning.

As a result of that I would expect that Google’s ability to understand user intent will continue to dramatically improve and we are likely to see more queries being answered by features such as the answer box and perhaps right within the search box itself.

Kristine Schachinger, Consultant

RankBrain is an effort to produce better query sets for Google’s Entity Search.