Google
has a new search algorithm, the system it uses to sort through all the
information it has when you search and come back with answers. It’s called
“Hummingbird” and below, what we know about it so far.
What’s
a “search algorithm?”
That’s
a technical term for what you can think of as a recipe that Google uses to sort
through the billions of web pages and other information it has, in order to
return what it believes are the best answers.
What’s
“Hummingbird?”
It’s
the name of the new search algorithm that Google is using, one that Google says
should return better results.
So
that “PageRank” algorithm is dead?
No. PageRank is
one of over 200 major “ingredients” that go into the Hummingbird recipe.
Hummingbird looks at PageRank — how important links to a page are deemed to be
— along with other factors like whether Google believes a page is of good
quality, the words used on it and many other things (see our Periodic
Table Of SEO Success Factors for a better sense of some of these).
Why
is it called Hummingbird?
Google
told us the name come from being “precise and fast.”
When
did Hummingbird start? Today?
Google
started using Hummingbird about a month ago, it said. Google only announced the
change today.
What
does it mean that Hummingbird is now being used?
Think
of a car built in the 1950s. It might have a great engine, but it might also be
an engine that lacks things like fuel injection or be unable to use unleaded
fuel. When Google switched to Hummingbird, it’s as if it dropped the old engine
out of a car and put in a new one. It also did this so quickly that no one
really noticed the switch.
When’s
the last time Google replaced its algorithm this way?
Google
struggled to recall when any type of major change like this last happened. In
2010, the “Caffeine Update” was a huge change. But that was also a change
mostly meant to help Google better gather information (indexing) rather than
sorting through the information. Google search chief Amit Singhal told me that
perhaps 2001, when he first joined the company, was the last time the algorithm
was so dramatically rewritten.
What
about all these Penguin, Panda and other “updates” — haven’t those been changes
to the algorithm?
Panda, Penguin and
other updates were changes to parts of the old algorithm, but not an
entire replacement of the whole. Think of it again like an engine. Those things
were as if the engine received a new oil filter or had an improved pump put in.
Hummingbird is a brand new engine, though it continues to use some of the same
parts of the old, like Penguin and Panda
The
new engine is using old parts?
Yes.
And no. Some of the parts are perfectly good, so there was no reason to toss
them out. Other parts are constantly being replaced. In general, Hummingbird —
Google says — is a new engine built on both existing and new parts, organized
in a way to especially serve the search demands of today, rather than one
created for the needs of ten years ago, with the technologies back then.
What
type of “new” search activity does Hummingbird help?
“Conversational
search” is one of the biggest examples Google gave. People, when speaking
searches, may find it more useful to have a conversation.
“What’s
the closest place to buy the iPhone 5s to my home?” A traditional search engine
might focus on finding matches for words — finding a page that says “buy” and
“iPhone 5s,” for example.
Hummingbird
should better focus on the meaning behind the words. It may better understand
the actual location of your home, if you’ve shared that with Google. It might
understand that “place” means you want a brick-and-mortar store. It might get
that “iPhone 5s” is a particular type of electronic device carried by certain
stores. Knowing all these meanings may help Google go beyond just finding pages
with matching words.
In
particular, Google said that Hummingbird is paying more attention to each word
in a query, ensuring that the whole query — the whole sentence or conversation
or meaning — is taken into account, rather than particular words. The goal is
that pages matching the meaning do better, rather than pages matching just a
few words.
I
thought Google did this conversational search stuff already!
It
does (see Google’s Impressive “Conversational Search” Goes Live On Chrome),
but it had only been doing it really within its Knowledge Graph answers.
Hummingbird is designed to apply the meaning technology to billions of pages
from across the web, in addition to Knowledge Graph facts, which may bring back
better results.
Does
it really work? Any before-and-afters?
We
don’t know. There’s no way to do a “before-and-after” ourselves, now. Pretty
much, we only have Google’s word that Hummingbird is improving things. However,
Google did offer some before-and-after examples of its own, that it says shows
Hummingbird improvements.
A
search for “acid reflux prescription” used to list a lot of drugs (such as this,
Google said), which might not be necessarily be the best way to treat the
disease. Now, Google says results have information about treatment in general,
including whether you even need drugs, such as this as one of the
listings.
A
search for “pay your bills through citizens bank and trust bank” used to bring
up the homepage for Citizens Bank but now should return the specific page about
paying bills
A
search for “pizza hut calories per slice” used to list an answer like this,
Google said, but not one from Pizza Hut. Now, it lists this answer
directly from Pizza Hut itself, Google says.
Could
it be making Google worse?
Almost
certainly not. While we can’t say that Google’s gotten better, we do know that
Hummingbird — if it has indeed been used for the past month — hasn’t sparked
any wave of consumers complaining that Google’s results suddenly got bad.
People complain when things get worse; they generally don’t notice when things
improve.
Does
this mean SEO is dead?
No, SEO
is not yet again dead. In fact, Google’s saying there’s nothing new or
different SEOs or publishers need to worry about. Guidance remains the same, it
says: have original, high-quality content. Signals that have been important in
the past remain important; Hummingbird just allows Google to process them in
new and hopefully better ways.
Does
this mean I’m going to lose traffic from Google?
If
you haven’t in the past month, well, you came through Hummingbird unscathed.
After all, it went live about a month ago. If you were going to have problems
with it, you would have known by now.
By
and large, there’s been no major outcry among publishers that they’ve lost
rankings. This seems to support Google saying this is very much a
query-by-query effect, one that may improve particular searches — particularly
complex ones — rather than something that hits “head” terms that can, in turn,
cause major traffic shifts.
But
I did lose traffic!
Perhaps
it was due to Hummingbird, but Google stressed that it could also be due to
some of the other parts of its algorithm, which are always being changed,
tweaked or improved. There’s no way to know.
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