Healthcare and Hummingbird: How Will Google’s Latest Algorithm Affect Your SEO Efforts?

by Kaysha Kalkofen

Hummingbird, Google’s new search algorithm introduced at the end of Sep­tember 2013, has marketers in every industry scratching their heads. According to Google’s search chief, Amit Singhal, Hummingbird is the biggest algo­rithm change since 2001.

Hummingbird pulls from different data points so that search results are more refined and conversationally sequential. It improves how search results are pulled because it does a better job at understanding the in­tent of long-tail search queries (queries that include more than a few words) as well as spoken and natural language search queries (questions asked by users on their mobile de­vices). For example, before this update, if a person typed in “Where is the closest place to my home to buy an iPhone5?” search results would have focused on pages that included the words “buy” and “iPhone5.” Hummingbird first focuses on the meaning behind these words and identifies the person’s location. The results will then in­clude businesses near the searcher’s location that mention iPhone5 sales on their sites.

In addition, if the person next typed “How do I get there from here?” Hummingbird will interpret several data points to understand that “there” means the store that sells the iPhone5 from the page the person just visited and that “here” means the person’s home. The point is to improve how Google pulls in the pages for search results by mapping relationships. That, in turn, means more relevant results – and less clicking and scrolling – for the user.

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