Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Natural language processing, or NLP, is the branch of AI that lets software read and make sense of human language, like the words in an email, a review or a search. Google Cloud describes it as using machine learning to find the structure and meaning of text, and it counts both recognizing language and generating it as types of NLP.
Source: Google Cloud, What is Natural Language Processing?, checked October 29, 2026
What Natural Language Processing (NLP) means for your business
Google's guide to its ranking systems names AI systems that read language, like BERT, which helps Google understand how combinations of words express different meanings. Large language models, the AI behind tools like ChatGPT, generate language, which Google Cloud counts as a type of NLP.
You'll see SEO tools sell "NLP keywords," lists of words a page should include because the top results use them. We'd skip that. A word list can make a page sound like everyone else's without making it answer the question any better.
What we'd do is write the way your customers talk on the phone. Use their words for the problem, then yours for the fix, in full sentences. If your pages read like a list of keywords instead of answers, rewriting them so search engines and AI tools can tell what you offer is where we'd put the effort.
Last reviewed October 29, 2026. All terms
How AI answers it today
On October 29, 2026, Google's AI Overview gave a textbook definition, citing IBM, AWS, SAS, a government glossary and YouTube. ChatGPT answered without searching or citing anything. Neither tied NLP to how search engines read web pages.
Our run through ChatGPT and Google's AI Overview, October 29, 2026. A sample, not what every buyer sees.
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