At the end of September, Google revealed the biggest update in their search algorithm since “Caffeine” in 2010. Hummingbird provides users with a more relevant and comprehensive search that is supposed to accommodate advanced queries such as questions. Google’s end goal is to deliver the fastest and most accurate (hence, the name Hummingbird) search results for their customer making it more “human friendly”.
Instead of keyword searches, Google’s emphasis is on the semantic meaning of the search. With this new equation, I take a look at how this new feature may affect different stakeholders:
User
- Faster and more accurate search results.
- Depending on where, and how you’re googling will affect results. For example, searching “pizza” on your desktop at home will likely bring up pizza recipes, versus searching “pizza” on your phone on the road, which likely means you are looking for the closest pizza place.
- Better overall mobile search experience.
SEO
- With the change in the way users are searching (asking questions/conversational searches), content creators need to be mindful to address these questions within their web content.
- There is added pressure for link building and overall content to be high quality and to provide value to user.
- More opportunity for smaller companies to get better placement
- There is a greater need to tie owned content back to Google in someway. The more Google services that a company adopts such as embedding YouTube videos on websites, adding Google + links etc., will pay off in the PageRanks.
- More control on people’s search – will direct you to other Google services if it makes sense.
- Higher quality data collection on users.
- Building trust and positive reputation with customer.
