Last week, Google announced a new layer to their already complex and wildly successful ranking algorithm. RankBrain is a new, artificially intelligent ranking tool that Google claims will improve search result accuracy even further.

RankBrain isn’t the self-aware, autonomous robot that some people might picture when they hear the term “Artificial Intelligence”, but rather a vastly powerful computer that incorporates machine learning. Essentially, RankBrain’s job is to recognize complex and emerging patterns, those that humans are adept at identifying, at a superhuman pace. What makes RankBrain intelligent is the ability to evolve and modify the matching criteria to better identify patterns.

Much like other algorithm updates, excluding the infamous Penguin Update, RankBrain won’t impact SEO best practices very much at all…yet. Google hopes that RankBrain will help to identify sites that were optimized with best practices in mind, and improve their rank accordingly. For “white hat” optimizers like Silver Creative, that’s great news and one more step toward a spam-free Google search page.

For more information on RankBrain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence see SearchEngineLand’s FAQ: All About The New Google RankBrain Algorithm