Informed Webmaster

In early November, we began making use of neural matching as part of the process of generating local search results. Neural matching allows us to better understand how words are related to concepts, as explained more here:

Neural matching is an AI-based system Google began using in 2018 primarily to understand how words are related to concepts. It's like a super-synonym system. Synonyms are words that are closely related to other words...

The use of neural matching means that Google can do a better job going beyond the exact words in business name or description to understand conceptually how it might be related to the words searchers use and their intents...

Neural matching in local search -- which we call the Nov. 2019 Local Search Update -- has now fully rolled out. However, as with web search, results can change as there are smaller updates that happen all the time, as well as content itself that constantly changes...

The use of neural matching in local search doesn’t require any changes on behalf of businesses. Those looking to succeed should continue to follow the fundamental advice we offer here:
https://support.google.com/business/answer/7091

For those who have asked (and thanks for the good question), this was a global launch covering countries and languages worldwide.

BERT, our new way for Google Search to better understand language, is now rolling out to over 70 languages worldwide. It initially launched in Oct. for US English. You can read more about BERT below & a full list of languages is in this thread....

There are now signs that there is a Google search ranking algorithm update going on. The signals started late December 10th, mostly on December 11th and throughout December 12th. We see both chatter in the SEO forums and from the automated tracking tools.