Google RankBrain. What It means. (I think.)

I was reading a post today about RankBrain, the artificial intelligence (AI) tool that Google engineers have been training since last October to process user-search results in such a way that it makes them more relevant to users.

It's essentially a new tweak to Google's already highly complex Hummingbird algorithm to make search (i.e. advertising) more effective/intuitive/human.  (Slightly ironic then that they don't use humans to actually train the algorithm.)

It's got the SEO community in a palaver and it's scaring some SEO practitioners because if it works it will make PageRank, which assesses inbound links, less effective. (Link building is the current top dollar methodology for increasing a website's prominence and authority on Google.) And that will mean genuinely good websites will beat wolves in sheep's clothing in site ranking.  

That's good for those of us who value quality over quantity.

Right?

Well the boffins can't really agree on anything in SEO - which suits them.  As the more black magic associated with it the better.

They make it singularly as complex as they can, although five minutes spent perusing this outstanding infographic by Column Five Media might help you get see the full(ish) picture  because it gives an, at-a-glance, perspective on the factors that influence search. 

What's gratifying about this, from my personal perspective, is that the things we mere humans can influence, are situated prominently and with authority, at the top left of the table; Content, Words, Research and Freshness.  

I guess RankBrain is going to like these a lot and further move the dial away from link-building as the most effective means of getting people to read your website.

But if you want a boffin or two's view; help yourself and maybe you could explain to me what they mean.

...it's merely a switch from user-intermediated algo-tweaks to mostly automated algo-tweaks to arrive at the same end result

or this

 ...also think they will include the fact element they patented - the number of facts a page has about a keyword set - latent semantics meets encyclopedic data.