Google quietly made a huge change to its core search technology, one that affects about 90 precent of searches worldwide! They call it the Hummingbird.
Revealed by Amit Singhal, Google’s senior VP, it has been 15 years in the making. Singhal compared the overhaul to switching out jet engines while an airplane is in mid-flight.
And no, its not something you can download like an App, nor is it the newest ‘must have’ social media tool, and its definitely not another program that’s essential for your website to be fully optimised for Google. However, it is still important to understand what exactly it means for your website and your rankings…
To answer those questions you have to think about what the Hummingbird represents in real life. Google called it the Hummingbird to emphasise and characterise the precision and speed of a hummingbird. The Hummingbird is an upgrade to the Google search engine that has drastically improved search results for those that use Google, people like you and me. It’s the new set of algorithms, which has leapfrogged over its out-dated predecessor that was designed before SEO was even relevant.
It is basically like Google’s version of Siri for iPhone. Google will now better understand how words interact, connect and create sentences, to provide a much improved search experience.
An easy way to understand it would be to think of the change as an artificial intelligence system that understands more complex questioning, making it easier to ask spoken questions in more conversational phrases. To put it simply, Google no longer brings you results based solely on the most popular keywords. No, now with the new Google Hummingbird algorithm, you can ask the search engine questions that involve higher levels of semantics, the same way you would a person. Give it a shot, ask Google a more complex question and see what it returns. I really like to ask a ‘VS. question.’ Type in two things that are similar like Jupiter Vs. Saturn and it will return the basics stats on both. Or, because I still cant believe its not butter, I typed in Butter Vs. Margarine. Try it yourself.
If I type a question like “What is SEO” it will return results relating to ‘What is Search Engine Optimisation’, not just the results relating to SEO, because it knows that SEO means Search Engine Optimisation.
It has been described as ‘conversational searching’ and it’s going to feel a lot more intuitive. Instead of thinking ‘what will Google return to me if I type these words?’ you can just begin to type whatever question pops into your head.
However the system isn’t perfect as it hasn’t had enough information and questions asked of it to refine itself, and it doesn’t help that people are in such a habit of treating Google like it doesn’t understand the human language beyond keywords.
Fifteen years ago “if you wanted to find something, you had to think of the right keywords that would appear on the right Web pages,” Singhal said. However people have become more laid back and comfortable with searching, especially when using voice-activated search, he explained. People are often asking longer questions that involve more complex concepts. “And our algorithm had to go through some fundamental rethinking of how we are going to keep our results relevant.”
In the near future as Hummingbird becomes more comprehensive and armed to the teeth with search behaviour data, it will become increasingly important to tailor your website to these changes and the ways you approach keywords. Well-prepared and clever content creators may benefit from such an adjustment, and others may get left behind. You want our Melbourne agency advice? Stop with the sales talk on your website and start becoming more factual and helpful with your content.
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