What The MUM Update Means For Your Business

In this article, we will look at what the recent MUM update means for your business. Here is a quick summary of what MUM actually is, and it’s not a middle-aged lady in curlers doing the school run.

MUM is the acronym for Google’s Multitask Unified Model and was the update for BERT and landed in June 2021. It seeks to deliver search results via the Google network that overcome language and layout barriers so as to deliver an improved service throughout the World on the search engine for the user.

MUM is clever, just like the real thing, and can deliver and translate over 75 different languages including text and images and then show the user results that provide more information without the need for further searches compared to BERT, (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers). I would have changed it just for the name to be honest never mind the increase in capabilities.

How Can Digital Marketing Help?

So, let’s look now at MUM in more detail and why we needed it with the help of a digital marketing agency in Bristol, Digital NRG.

Multitask Unified Model interprets meaning in a way that breaks down language barriers to provide us with the highest performing search engine that has even been launched. It’s very fast and spreads and crawls further than any of its predecessors, and in a world that is constantly demanding more relevant and correct answers quicker than ever before, MUM delivers providing accurate answers in microseconds making it attract and keep more users than ever which is the overall aim of any search engine. With 75 languages available within the software update it caters for nearly 85% of the World’s language requirements. 

Understanding Search Engine Result Pages 

Traditionally SEO content and keywords have been the critical part of how information is chosen to serve up to the search engine user and whilst this is still key critical in the process, MUM also wants more phrase friendly and natural keywords, statements used in a natural context and even some Neuro-Linguistic Programming techniques to help to serve quicker and better-researched results to further match the query. With the additional supplement of images and, coming soon, video and audio algorithmic introductions, this is the future of searching today.

If we look at a style of search today, say looking for a holiday destination, we often perform follow up searches to look for travel options, safety and security details, cuisine, entertainment, car hire, the list is endless and in previous search engine algorithms this would need different search criteria every time, you end up with multiple screens often showing similar information but with only slight nuances to matching your searching. With MUM the search will gather different more natural search additions for you and ultimately cut down the amount of time you need to search and research every bit of information you need. 

Real-Time Translations For Multiple Languages 

How does the language barrier work I hear you ask? Well, Mum finds results in multiple languages and translates them to fit your meaning you can access previously unavailable local news and knowledge giving you a much better insight in most cases to your query.

No other Google technology so far has offered this so you can imagine how and why this is a gamechanger for search results in many subjects. It will be more “human” rather than machine-led, imagine what this could do if your sat nav had a camera manned, or womaned if you like, by a real-life pair of eyes, not a pre-recorded robot.

This statement is taken directly from Google themselves and in particular, we should pay attention to the number of times they say it’s more powerful than its predecessor, BERT.

“MUM has the potential to transform how Google helps you with complex tasks. MUM uses the T5 text to text framework and is 1,000 times more powerful than BERT. MUM not only understands language but also generates it.

It’s trained across 75 different languages and many different tasks at once, allowing it to develop a more comprehensive understanding of information and world knowledge than previous models. And MUM is multimodal, so it understands information across text and images and, in the future, can expand to more modalities like video and audio.”

1000 times more powerful than other algorithms

Now, that is some claim from Google right there, 1000 times more powerful than the previously known most powerful search engine algorithm that it replaces. Not only can it access text on web pages but now, thanks to MUM, it can also index HTML. PDF, TXT too as well as the images and video capability we spoke about earlier on in this article.

Google’s philosophy of organising the World’s information and making it accessible to all does seem to be getting a lot closer with the launch of this revolutionary bit of AI software. As a webmaster then how can you utilise the launch of MUM to be to your maximum benefit? For MUM to work for you and your business then what you would need to do is to create high-quality content.

The content should be very focused but should also bring incomparable topics and information deemed to be useful. It should answer all the relevant questions and should contain related multimedia for MUM to read and decide if it’s relevant to the original search or could be relevant based on historic searching both by that individual and the search history of every individual looking for similar topics.

Allowing Content To Reach Its Full Potential 

If MUM does then find it relevant or at least of interest historically then your content could join the global stock of informative contributions. Using multilingual SEO keywords can now allow your content to break down the barriers of language and reach a wider, worldly audience. 

So, although MUM is new and being rolled out around the globe as we speak it’s already showing enough in the search community to know that it will be the future of search at least for the upcoming 3 or 4 years and the real advantages, when the globe is better connected due to MUM, are yet to come.

By bringing historically hidden content into search queries along with images, videos, 75 different languages, local interpretations and joined-up thinking when it comes to displaying relevant information through an AI thought process, we can be sure that Google has, and will, nail this opportunity. 

MUM Algorithm Summary 

We hope that you have enjoyed reading about the new MUM update from Google and whether you are an avid searcher or a webmaster looking at how to encourage your content onto the golden search results package that this has been of use. Thanks to Digital NRG in Bristol for their help in writing this piece of content. Thanks for reading.