The Most Important Update Since Penguin And Panda
Google has just released details about the biggest update to its search algorithm since its inception in 2001.
The last two updates Panda and Penguin shook the SEO world and caused quite a stir. Some sites were downranked and SEO marketers were left wondering where they stood.
Should you be worried with this update? If you’ve been doing everything you should have been doing all the way along with your website’s SEO then no. Hummingbird is Google getting smarter at delivering the ‘actual’ results people are looking for.
We love the concept, and as SEO professionals we can only hope they get it right without penalty to all the people who put in genuine time and effort into their websites. So far so good if you ask us, but we have nothing to compare against as the update is now firmly in place and has been for over a month so Google tells us.
If you really want to get down to the nitty gritty on Hummingbird, check out this great article on the Forbes website here. Basically Google have swapped out an old engine for a new one, and one which is more adept at dealing with conversational search. Conversational search is where people don’t just search for keywords, they search for conventional natural language phrases.
For example, people these days aren’t searching for just terms like “fix fridge”, you’re more likely to see a term like “how do I fix my fridge”. Google now has an engine which is turbo charged to deal with these more natural types of search terms.
Not only that, but the relevance of the results has changed in this update. Searching for “AppThat search engine optimisation” should result in our SEO pages coming up in the top hits, and not just the main AppThat page itself.
One of the driving factors of this large algorithmic change is also the shift in devices people are using to search on, and the way they are using those devices to search. It’s not just keyboard warriors utilising Google in all its glory anymore, but speech based searches from smartphones is also on the rise. Google is aware of this and Hummingbird is its answer.
Most importantly you’ll want to know what this means for you… If you’re one of our clients, or following our SEO techniques, then you’ll have to change nothing. Keep doing what you’re doing and following the advice we give to you to get your site great rankings. White Hat SEO techniques will win hands down any day of the week.
Hummingbird is clearly about getting you higher quality and more relevant search results. We love all the changes Google makes to the way it displays its searches because we play by the rules, and it means the work we do for ourselves, and our clients, keep climbing the Google ladder.
