Google's John Mueller recently answered questions on a Reddit thread that was around the topic of MUM. He specifically answered whether MUM will make SEO obsolete and pointed out that SEO will remain relevant in the foreseeable future and MUM will not make SEO obsolete.
What is Google MUM?
MUM is an acronym that stands for Multitask Unified Model. Google announced MUM in a blog post in May. Google MUM is expected to be 1000 times more powerful than the BERT algorithm. MUM uses the T5 text-to-text framework and not only understands language but also generates it. It's trained across 75 different languages and can perform several tasks simultaneously. Or to put it simply, searching with MUM will be like talking to a subject expert who would be able to answer multiple questions in one go by falling back on the vast amount of knowledge of the subject that he has.
MUM's ability to source answers from multiple languages is deemed to be quite important as it's expected that an answer source from multiple languages will be more relevant than what your local language may contain.
ON this related topic. A Dallas SEO Qamar Zaman of KISS PR says.
"SEO Consultant Qamar Zaman provides an explanation of how Google’s MUM, which is powered by AI, will change the search landscape.
From the perspective of those running websites, Qamar Zaman, an SEO Consultant and CEO of KISS PR, predicts that MUM could impact search engine optimization practices in the near future.
“The need to create multimedia content optimized for long-tail keywords and conversation question queries is more important than ever,” Zaman said. “If you want your content to rank on Google after MUM is rolled out, you need to craft content that provides comprehensive answers and solutions to the problems of your target audience.” Source
How Will MUM change the search?
Consider this, if you want to know how to make Spanish paella, then an article written in Spanish by a 4th generation Spanish chef would be considered more authoritative than an article written by a stay-at-home mom in New York who has had no practical living experience of Spanish cooking. Who would you trust for a paella recipe? The 4th generation Spanish chef or the stay-at-home mom in New York?
In its blog post announcing the launch of MUM, Google used an example of a person who has hiked Mt Adams and now wants to hike Mt. Fuji next Fall. Google further explains that relying on native Japanese links may be better for a person who is looking for information about hiking Mt. Fuji as local Japanese links would surely contain native information about several topics and subtopics related to hiking Mt. Fuji. This information would certainly not be there in other languages or would not be available easily.
Is MUM un-optimizable?
John Mueller responded to this question by stating that things are always evolving as far as SEO is concerned. Indeed, the MUM framework itself can be said to be an evolution of SEO in a way that it provides dynamic and interactive results in place of the static 10 links that search engine results pages used to display until recently.
It's expected that MUM will be able to deliver more detailed answers to search queries while simpler queries may be answered using traditional Google algorithms. Still, it's too early to say anything as things will become more clearer only after the full rollout of MUM.
Other Sources: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-mum-and-seo/409130/
Source: CoffeeWithQShow
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