What is NLP?
NLP, or natural language processing, is the field of artificial intelligence that enables computers to read, interpret, and generate human language. It underlies tasks such as translation, sentiment analysis, search, summarization, and conversational assistants.
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What NLP does
NLP breaks language into pieces a computer can work with and finds meaning in them. Typical tasks include classifying text, extracting names and topics, judging sentiment, translating, and answering questions.
Modern large language models are built on NLP research and have expanded what the field can do.
NLP in marketing
Marketers use NLP to analyze reviews and survey responses, group search queries by topic, route support messages, and power chatbots. It's also part of how search engines interpret what a query means.
Results are usually best when you check a sample of the output by hand.
Limits of NLP
Language is full of sarcasm, slang, and context, and NLP systems can misread them. Performance can also be weaker in some languages or specialized fields.
Common questions
What's the difference between NLP and an LLM?
NLP is the broad field of getting computers to work with language. An LLM is a specific kind of model, now widely used to perform NLP tasks.
What is sentiment analysis?
It's an NLP task that classifies text as positive, negative, or neutral, or by finer emotions. Marketers use it on reviews, social posts, and survey comments.
Does NLP affect SEO?
Search engines use language processing to interpret queries and content. Writing clearly and covering a topic thoroughly helps those systems understand your pages.
Is NLP the same as machine learning?
No. NLP is a field focused on language, and it often uses machine learning methods. Machine learning is broader and applies to many kinds of data.
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