Did Google Says It Will Offer Curriculum For Optimizing For BERT?

So Gary Illyes from Google was on stage at PubCon and yea, he may or may not have said some things that caused a bit of a stir in the SEO community. Some are quoting him as saying that Google will be providing “a curriculum for optimizing for BERT.” I saw numerous tweets, one was actually deleted and reposted. But here is the big tweet floating around:

Things to come to Google in 2020: more mobile first indexing, changes to user-agents, a curriculum for optimizing for #BERT. @methode #pubcon

— Kelcey Drapp (@kelceydrapp) February 6, 2020

Nicole then posted something similar and deleted it, I guess to add more clarification around what Gary said before or after the curriculum statement:

I’ll say it again for clarity. You cannot optimize for BERT. But you should work on your writing skills and learn to flow and transition in your writing and write for a lay audience. @methode

— Nicole DeLeon (@nicoleldeleon) February 6, 2020

Google has said before you don’t optimize for BERT and here, I guess, at PubCon, Gary said it again but maybe also said that Google will communicate more around BERT for webmasters?

I was not there, so I do not know for sure what he said within the context, but these tweets are making it’s rounds because yea, if he said Google will be providing “a curriculum for optimizing for BERT” then that is interesting, to say the least:

“A curriculum for optimizing for BERT.” Well, that’s interesting… ???? https://t.co/LNMVxeb3tC

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 6, 2020

My thoughts, Gary first said you cannot optimize for BERT but then said Google will be offering a curriculum around what BERT means and how webmasters can think differently about it? But I do not know.

Okay, Gary was joking:

I asked him after his talk to clarify and he let me know it was intended as a joke.

— Nicole DeLeon (@nicoleldeleon) February 7, 2020

So there you have it, no curriculum for BERT optimization.

Forum discussion at Twitter.