Google touted Hummingbird as a major change, but truthfully, few saw major changes in search rankings – including pros who spend significant time observing Google rankings across a wide swath of sites – when the change went live this fall. Ranking changes certainly were not on the magnitude of those that happened after the previous two major critter-named updates.
Hummingbird (Google actually downplays this update name, and uses “Intelligent Search”) is designed to make Google more responsive to longer, more natural-language queries. It is also designed to provide more complete answers to comparative questions. For example, try Googling the term Eiffel Tower vs. Empire State Building.
When you do, you will see an interesting “information card” Google presents to directly compare the stats of the two structures, where Google previously would have simply provided you with a list of informative links. This is Intelligent Search, (a.k.a. Hummingbird) in action.
At a more directly commercial level, if you Google flights New York to London you will see some typical results, but also a prominent Google information card that summarizes available flights and lets you plug in your travel date range, right on the search page. This is a significant change for airlines and other travel services competing in this space.
Google reps themselves have stated that these examples are early harbingers of where Google search is going in the future, so we don’t need to guess about their intent.
Building for these changes will position you better for the future, and will improve user experience on your site right away.
Fortunately, there are clear steps you can take to position your site and your business to make the most of Google’s next step in its evolution:
You’re not likely to see a major impact from Hummingbird at this point, but you will definitely see Google Intelligent Search features reaching across more and more queries over time.
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