A lot has happened in the previous few years for Google’s engineers; in addition to the much-discussed Penguin & Panda changes, we saw the largest update since 2001 last year. So, what does Hummingbird imply for local SEO Melbourne? What’s behind it, and will it have the same impact on your site as the Penguin/Panda updates?
As long as you follow the regulations, you shouldn’t have any problems if the upgrade hasn’t already impacted you. In August 2013, Hummingbird was discreetly introduced, and most website owners didn’t notice a change.
Exactly What A Hummingbird Is
Hummingbird is the newest algorithm, which includes more than 200 parameters that may influence rankings and search results, in contrast to Panda and Penguin, which were tweaks to an existing section of the algorithm. It’s hardly a surprise that the most significant adjustments were made with a focus on mobile, considering the recent boom of the mobile industry.
As a result, Hummingbird’s ‘conversational search’ algorithm was introduced, focusing on a phrase’s meaning rather than specific keywords. As a result, many individuals choose to speak rather than write while searching on a mobile device since it is much simpler to speak than to type on a touch keyboard.
Instead of searching for specific phrases, Hummingbird attempts to grasp a query like “where can I locate a pharmacist in Birmingham?” rather than searching for individual terms. While the words themselves are important, the full phrase is deciphered rather than simply the words themselves.
Hummingbird’s Impact On Search Engines
Google’s understanding of the language used for a search query has altered because of Hummingbird. In the past, Google would return results with the same or similar phrases across several pages based on a query’s specific keywords. Your keyword density, or the number of times a specific term appeared on a page, was more significant than employing your keywords organically.
Updates like Hummingbird started to look at the language people were using in searches and on sites to better grasp what information they were truly seeking. Instead of focusing just on keywords, Google now considers context and the link between words in a query when selecting results. As a result, Google’s search algorithm will better understand human language, how people search for information, and what information they desire.
A new comparison and filtering option were added to the search engine results with Hummingbird (SERPs). Hummingbird builds on and improves upon Google’s Knowledge Graph, which was introduced a year earlier. For example, comparing oranges to other citrus fruits may be done in the Knowledge Graph, which allows the user to narrow their search results. As previously stated, this is all about Google’s endeavor to make it easier for people to get the information they need.
Semantic Search Is On The Rise
Instead of looking for literal matches between words or sentences, the Hummingbird update relies on semantic search. As a result, not only does Google better represent human communication, but it also makes long-tail, conversational, and mobile searches easier.
For example, Mobilegeddon and portable indexing and design directly result from Hummingbird’s influence. Amit Singhal argues in the Hummingbird launch that “having a ‘conversation’ with Google also needs to be more natural.” This strategy makes it much more difficult for users using their mobile device and voice to locate important information in the SERPs since it compares strings of keywords. As a result of this, Hummingbird was a need for these users.
Two years before Hummingbird went live and just before the Mobilegeddon upgrade, mobile searches overtook desktops for the first time in 2015. Google created Hummingbird to train the engine in front of this transition.
Optimizing for mobile, responsive web design, and page performance have become commonplace in SEO since Mobilegeddon, but it’s easy to overlook how significant the change to semantic search was. The impact of Hummingbird on the emergence of mobile or voice search cannot be overstated, even decades after the fact. It is possible that semantic search would not exist as we know it today if Google’s algorithm had not been updated.
Google’s Hummingbird And SEO
Compared to prior algorithm improvements, Hummingbird had less impact on most websites. When Google disclosed its latest algorithm modification, it had already been in effect for a month. According to reports, many users didn’t notice website changes or performance.
It isn’t much you have to do to optimize for the Hummingbird update if you’re dedicated to white hat SEO tactics and offering a positive user experience. Your content advertising messages should focus on creating high-quality content in particular. Rather than only optimizing for head phrases, Hummingbird now emphasizes long-tail keywords and queries. However, these keywords typically appear naturally in material generated for consumers. When it comes to the Hummingbird update or any other Google algorithm change, you may also want to consider hiring an SEO company to assist you in making the required site updates.
Conclusion
To increase the quality of the search results, Google’s Hummingbird algorithm analyses search queries more thoroughly. Natural language processing and semantic search are used to accomplish this (NLP).
To better grasp the meaning of a search, Hummingbird looks at keyword clusters rather than individual terms. Consequently, Google can provide users with relevant results when they search.
