Google's hummingbird algorithm

Google's new search algorithm is called "Hummingbird" that it uses to retrieve and organize results that you search for. Its causing a lot of buzz at work. The name is being tossed around by  SEO "experts" as it is the coolest thing since sliced bread. Sigh!. Anyways, let's take a look at what this is all about.

Google claims that Hummingbird is its best search algorithm yet. Google named it so to indicate "precise and fast". Google's last major update to its search engine called Caffeine was in 2010. In fact Google claims this to be almost a rewrite of its search engine. One of the biggest features of Hummingbird is what it calls Conversational Search . With this feature, you can ask it questions. 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.

An example used on SearchEngineLand.com a  search for “pay your bills through citizens bank and trust bank” used to bring up the home page  for Citizens Bank but now should return the specific page  about paying bills.  

Here is another example from SearchEngineLand.com.

Submit a query to Google such as "show me pictures of Fenway Park", and it does:

Then follow that query with this one: "who plays there", and you get this result:

This doesn't change how we should structure SEO in websites, which fundamentally still relies on good hierarchical URL structure and breadcrumbs, and good relevant content (See my earlier post).

I am surprised when websites think that simply adding an SEO URL to their page is all that is needed to get to the top of the search results. While I agree that it is an important element, it is not the only factor. Equally important is the page content. One website, that I consulted for, wanted to remove all database lookup ids from URLs, even if these Ids only appear in the end of the URL. They wanted absolute clean URLs, and are not satisfied with canonicalization of pages. Stripping ids from the end of URLs is tough to do for pages that are database driven. I tried to convince them that content on pages also need to be fixed and adding the massive complexity of converting these dynamic pages into static ones may not give them the ROI they are looking for without good and relevant content.
Web sites ignore important elements such as H1 , title, meta keywords and description tags or have this carelessly coded in pages. Google uses these to index pages and thus has equal importance to SEO URL's. Good content is important. Additionally, websites in due course ignore the importance of having a good sitemap or ignore the need to update sitemap content, get rid of dead URL's and handle Page not founds elegantly.

Hi, first time ever blogging. I have spend several years building and enabling commerce, analytics and SEO for websites in the ecommerce world , but never anything for a site of my own.
This will be exciting and a learning experience for me! Looking forward to the Google marketing challenge