Despite advances in artificial intelligence, Google still struggles to understand some complex queries, especially those containing “not” and prepositions like “with” or “near.”
What you must remember :
- Google is having trouble with queries containing “not”.
- Prepositions also pose comprehension problems for algorithms.
- Long and complex queries are particularly difficult to interpret.
Google’s Challenges with Complex Queries
Despite significant advances over the years in understanding user intentions, Google continues to have difficulty with some complex queries.
Elizabeth Tucker, director and product manager at Google, discussed these lingering pain points on the latest episode of the “Search Off The Record” podcast.
Queries with “not”
Queries containing the word “not” are problematic. As Tucker explains, it’s difficult for Google’s algorithms to determine whether “not” simply means the exclusion of a word or whether it has a different semantic meaning.
For example, a search like “shoes not made in China” can be interpreted in multiple ways: is the user looking for shoes made outside of China or information about brands that have moved their production out of China? This ambiguity makes it difficult to match user intent with appropriate content.
The problem of prepositions
Prepositions, which indicate relationships between words in a sentence, also cause problems for Google. Queries like “restaurants with terrace” or “hotels near the beach” rely heavily on prepositions to convey key information about the user’s needs.
This means that it is not enough to include the right keywords on a page; the content must be structured to clearly communicate the relationships between these keywords.
The impact of long and complex queries
Google’s difficulties with complex queries are particularly long tail searchesoften consisting of specific, multi-word phrases that account for a significant portion of search traffic.
These long-tail keywords are often seen as an opportunity for SEO due to their low competition and their accuracy. However, if Google has trouble understanding these complex queries, it can be more difficult for websites to rank for them, even with well-optimized content.
The solutions considered by Google
Google is actively working to improve the handling of these linguistically complex queries, but a complete solution is still under development. Tucker specifies that the problem is not yet resolved and that Google continues to invest in natural language understanding and other AI-based technologies.
What could be done to fix it ?
For SEO professionals and website owners, there are several actions that can be considered in response to this information:
- Focus on clarity and specificity of content. The more clearly you communicate the relationships between concepts and key phrases, the easier it will be for Google to understand and rank your pages.
- Use structured data and other technical SEO best practices to help search engines analyze your content more effectively.
- Monitor search traffic and rankings for complex queries, and be prepared to adjust your strategy if you see drops or inconsistencies.
- Stay informed about Google’s efforts to improve its understanding of natural language and be prepared to adapt as new algorithms and technologies emerge.
