Humming Bird Algorithm

Google's new 'Hummingbird' algorithm is about queries, not just SEO. The most important element of the changes revolve around how search queries are processed. Instead of simply parsing searches one word at a time, the new algorithm is tuned to parsing questions posed by users, then organizing the results in terms of the most valuable answers to those questions first. Google estimates that some 90 percent of searches are affected. The most revealing thing about Hummingbird is how it reflects an ongoing change in the demands people are making on search engines.

The algorithm was named as the result being “precise and fast.” Hummingbird is a brand new engine, though it continues to use some of the same parts of the old, like Penguin and Panda. Panda, Penguin and other updates were changes to parts of the old algorithm, but not an entire replacement of the whole. Think of it again like an engine. Those things were as if the engine received a new oil filter or had an improved pump put in. In general, Hummingbird — Google says — is a new engine built on both existing and new parts, organized in a way to especially serve the search demands of today, rather than one created for the needs of ten years ago, with the technologies back then.

The main focus was that the new algorithm allows Google to more quickly parse full questions (as opposed to parsing searches word-by-word), and to identify and rank answers to those questions from the content they have indexed. The most revealing thing about Hummingbird is how it reflects an ongoing change in the demands people are making on search engines. Keyword queries are giving way to longer, more sophisticated questions, driven at least in part by voice searches. The more Google enables such things, the more people expect the results to be useful and complete, so further ramp-ups of this kind are almost certainly on the way. Google's main "skunkworks" projects at this point all seem to revolve around natural-language processing of one kind or another. They're using the data harvested from the Web as a whole to aid in language translation; with Hummingbird, they may well be using the click-through behavior for results returned from questions to retool Google all that much more into an AI that knows at least as much -- if not more -- about the real world than we do.