Silly Little Hummingbird
Put simply, the “Hummingbird” is just the name of the most recent algorithm update that Google has implemented, to improve search results. And guess what, that’s what every Google algorithm update is about, pretty much without fail. Yet, there is a certain terror that spreads across the land when news of a pending update hits.
We so often find ourselves wondering, why the terror? If you just stick to what have always been good online marketing techniques and best practices, well, then 99% of the time, your website(s) will do just fine. This being said, here is a basic primer on the good ole’ Hummingbird.
01
Like the other updates, the Hummingbird is just another search engine algorithm update that Google has implemented to improve search results.
02
The Hummingbird went into effect actually in late August of this year,
but Google didn’t announce it until late September.
03
Why the name “Hummingbird”?
Google said simply, like a hummingbird, this update is “precise and fast”.
04
Hummingbird was the first major update to the Google search algorithm in many years, contrary to popular belief about the gravity of “Penguin”, “Panda” and other update from recent years. Those were relatively minor, while Hummingbird was a serious re-write.
05
Another way to think about Hummingbird is as a new engine built on both existing and new replacement parts, configured in a way to better serve the search user demands of today, as opposed to engine running for the needs of ten years ago, with outmoded parts and low efficiency. That kind of thing.
06
Google is focusing with the Hummingbird on “Conversational search“. What this boils down to is that people tend to search, in some niches more than others, in a conversation manner, especially when speaking searches. So the algorithm can read these searches in a more conversational manner. In this way, Google has indicated that Hummingbird is giving closer attention to every word in a search query or long-tail keyword phrase — in other words the whole sentence or “conversation” is considered, rather than just a 1 or 2 particular keywords. Again, the goal is better search results, nothing mystical happening here.
07
So what does this mean for the world of SEO? Not much, actually – business as usual, pretty much. Google’s says that SEOs and webmasters should stick to the tried and true – having original, high-quality content. Signals of content quality, such as social sharing of your content, that have been important in historically are still important. Hummingbird just allows Google to sift through these signals in more efficient, and hopefully improved, ways.
