“The male hummingbird when it flies, Shoots like a rocket,

The snake while it walks, Holds his hands in his pocket”

Russian littérateur Vladimir Nobokov asserted during one of his frivolous yet more creative leisurely moments. However, Google’s Hummingbird update is equally fast acting and accurate. Nevertheless, to understand Hummingbird, you must understand what Google forever strives for. To be precise, it is nothing but search refinement. In other words, Google wants to take search up to such a level where all search enquiries are answered and nothing is left for guessing. Google has also reiterated that the Hummingbird updates will affect 90% of the searches made worldwide through Google search.

However, to become more familiar with the new update, the following FAQ will prove quite helpful.

What’s Hummingbird?

It’s the name of the new search algorithm that Google has just introduced (Oct 1, 2013), declaring that it would return better results.

Does it mean that the old ‘PageRank’ algorithm is dead?

Not at all. On the other hand, it forms a part of more than 200 major constituents that go into the formation of Hummingbird update, such as the quality of the content, its relevancy, etc.

Compared to Penguin, Panda updates, how radical will be Hummingbird updates?

Penguin, Panda updates were updates implied on the old algorithm, whereas Hummingbird is a totally new sort of algorithm, even though it has roots in the old algorithm framework.

What is so new and novel about Hummingbird?

According to Google, it is more of a ‘Conversational search” than a conventional search where Google previously paid attention to search words only. But in the case of Hummingbird, it assays the whole situation and then provides the result. In other words, Google will now consider the whole sentence, judge its perspective and then provide the result which will naturally be more comprehensive.

But Google has already ventured on Conversational search

It does (see Google’s Impressive “Conversational Search” Goes Live On Chrome), but it had only been doing it really within its Knowledge Graph answers. Hummingbird is designed to apply the meaning technology to billions of pages from across the web, in addition to Knowledge Graph facts, which may bring back better results.

Will Hummingbird herald the death of SEO?

No; not in the least. It will still insist on high quality content, appropriate keywords and relevancy. Moreover, signals that were considered important earlier still remains significant. It’s the approach that has undergone some changes – certainly going in favor of better results.

Postscript: From indications hinted by Google, searchers will be more benefited due to Google Hummingbird algorithm changes.