Google "Hummingbird" Search Algorithm Announced - Sept 2013

[Marc]

Google unleashes Hummingbird algo on search infrastructure - Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/26/google_algo_update/

According to Google, as time has gone on we have used more sophisticated, conversational queries, and moved away from short directed terms like, say: site:theregister 2009 + IPv6.

Today, people are much more likely to write: IPv6 article on the register with pictures from 2009, or something equally hard to parse.
...

"Hummingbird pays more attention to each word in the query, ensuring the whole query is taken into account – so if a resulting page is a bit less strong in general, but it's the most relevant to your search terms, that's the result you'll get," a Google spokesperson told El Reg.

Food for thought

Caffeine, Panda, Penguin and now Hummingbird. Oh my!

The algorithm was deployed several weeks ago and is involved in 90 per cent of Google's search queries, we understand.

We've been getting a lot more traffic here as of late... Hmmmm....

 

[Marc]

Also see this extensive, excellent writeup: http://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816