Hummingbird and Natural Language Search
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 10:00 am
The patent describes a method for making search engines perform better for natural language search queries.
Does the Hummingbird update have any new features?
Similar to the patent that Bill Slawski talked about that he discovered, Matt Cutts said that the Hummingbird algorithm update allowed Google to remove words from mobile search queries.
Matt Cutts said in his 2013 Pubcon keynote that Hummingbird lets algorithms remove words that are irrelevant to what users want to find from mobile voice search queries.
“…the idea behind Hummingbird is that if you’re doing a query, it’s probably a natural language query, and you might include some words that you don’t necessarily need, like “ Honey , are there any restaurants near the Diwang Building?”
Well, ' dear' doesn't actually add anything to the question.
If you ask directly "Are there any restaurants near Diwang Building?" then there is absolutely no problem.
Or, " Restaurants near Diwang Building, one of the tallest buildings in Shenzhen "
Some words are not that important.
Previously, Google only matched words in the query.
Now, we start to say which ones are actually more helpful and which ones are more important.
So Hummingbird is a step in that direction where if you say or type a longer query, then we figure out which words are more important…”
Matt's explanation of Hummingbird's functionality has three key points:
Google no longer relies solely on matching keywords in search queries.
Google can identify which words in a query are important and which are not.
Hummingbird is a step toward understanding queries more precisely.
The Hummingbird algorithm did not initially affect SEO
As mentioned earlier, some SEOs recommend updating web pages usa phone list to match longer, conversational search queries.
But just because Google is learning to understand conversational search queries doesn’t mean web pages need to become more conversational.
In the video recording of the 2013 Pubcon keynote mentioned above, Matt goes on to point out that Hummingbird does not affect SEO.
Matt observed:
“Now, there’s been a lot of articles written about the Hummingbird algorithm, and even if people just know the code name, they ask, how does Hummingbird affect SEO?
Even if people don't know what Hummingbird is, they'll still write 500 words describing how Hummingbird affects SEO.
And in fact it has little impact.”
The impact of the Hummingbird algorithm on search is subtle
Matt went on to describe how the changes introduced by Hummingbird were subtle and non-disruptive.
He said the impact of the Hummingbird update was wide-ranging, but the effect itself was small.
Matt explains:
“It affected 90% of queries, but the impact was so small, and a month after we launched it, people didn’t even notice.
So it's a subtle change that you don't have to worry about. It's not going to rock your world like pandas and penguins did.
It just makes the results slightly better, especially for those long-tail queries or very specific queries, it makes the results much better.”
Hummingbird and long-tail keywords
Katz went on to discuss Hummingbird, describing its impact on sites that target extremely specific, long-tail keywords.
To better understand what Matt Cutts is talking about, we have to stop here and talk about long-tail phrases, because this part of the Hummingbird update has an impact on some SEO practices .
Long-tail keywords are search phrases that are not searched very often.
Many people associate the long tail with keyword phrases that contain a large number of words, but this is not the essence of the long tail .
In the context of SEO, long tail simply describes keyword phrases that are rarely searched.
While some long-tail phrases may contain a lot of words, the number of words in a search query is not the defining characteristic of a long-tail search phrase.
The rarity of a phrase’s frequency as a search query determines what is a long-tail search query.
The opposite of a long-tail search query (such as divorce lawyers in Luohu, Shenzhen) is a main phrase (that is, the core keyword: such as lawyer, law firm) search query.
Core phrases are keyword phrases with high search query volume.
With so many people using the internet, spammers found it easy to rank for rare search queries, so they began targeting millions of long-tail search phrases in order to attract thousands of website visitors per day and make money from advertising.
Before Hummingbird came along, many legitimate sites also frequently targeted rare keyword phrase combinations for the same reason as spammers, because they were easy to rank for.
After Project Hummingbird, Google began using some of the techniques that Bill Slawski reviewed in his article on Google patents.
The change in how Google handles long-tail keyword phrases introduced with the Hummingbird algorithm had a profound impact on the way content is written, as many SEO service providers realized that focusing on thousands of granular long-tail search queries was unprofitable.
Cutts explained the long-tail aspect of the Hummingbird update:
“So unless you’re a spammy content creator and your goal is ‘how many SEOs does it take to change a lightbulb’ and you’ve got all the keywords and you’ve got 15 variations and you’ve got a page for each keyword, you know.
If you’re doing those really long-tail things, then it might affect you.
But generally speaking people don’t need to worry too much about hummingbirds.”
While he was assured that the change would not affect legitimate websites, Hummingbird did affect some legitimate, non-spammy sites that optimized their pages for highly specific search queries.
Hummingbird is a step toward conversational search
Since Hummingbird was a rewrite of an older algorithm to make it more precise and faster, it can be seen as a step towards today's more modern search engines.
Gone is the one-to-one match between keywords in search queries and keywords on web pages.
Combined with other improvements, such as the introduction of the Knowledge Graph, Google is now able to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning of user search queries and the true content of web pages.
This is a huge improvement over old search engines that matched keywords in a search query to the content of a web page.
Improvements introduced by Google Hummingbird may make this direction possible.
Although Cutts believes the initial effects were modest, the changes ultimately resulted in a more robust colloquial search experience, with a profound impact on which pages were ranked and which were not.
After the Hummingbird algorithm, search innovation accelerated
What we know about Hummingbird is that: it helps Google better understand conversational search queries; it is a rewrite of the old Google core algorithm; it helps Google understand the context of search queries; and Google improves its ability to answer long-tail search queries.
In the months following the release of the Hummingbird update, Google’s algorithm underwent a number of significant changes.
User Intent
Of course, when the conversation is about understanding user search queries, we are now entering the realm of understanding user intent.
Being able to remove extraneous words and understand the meaning of a search query is one step closer to understanding user intent.
Quick Conversation Search – June 11, 2014
Conversational search started to gain popularity in the spring of 2014, about six months after Hummingbird launched.
At that point, Google will be able to integrate current events into search results.
Google Hummingbird is named for its speed and accuracy.
The new feature enables Google Search to display sports scores in real time.
Nothing is faster than real time, and sports scores are an example of precise information.
Ok Google Launches – June 26, 2014
A few weeks later, Google launched its “Ok Google” conversational search product.
It can be said that the launch of the "Ok Google" voice command marks that Google has finally achieved its goal of providing a truly conversational search experience.
Conversational search depends heavily on understanding what people mean when they ask a question. This is a huge leap forward.
Many other breakthroughs in conversational search followed.
Does the Hummingbird update have any new features?
Similar to the patent that Bill Slawski talked about that he discovered, Matt Cutts said that the Hummingbird algorithm update allowed Google to remove words from mobile search queries.
Matt Cutts said in his 2013 Pubcon keynote that Hummingbird lets algorithms remove words that are irrelevant to what users want to find from mobile voice search queries.
“…the idea behind Hummingbird is that if you’re doing a query, it’s probably a natural language query, and you might include some words that you don’t necessarily need, like “ Honey , are there any restaurants near the Diwang Building?”
Well, ' dear' doesn't actually add anything to the question.
If you ask directly "Are there any restaurants near Diwang Building?" then there is absolutely no problem.
Or, " Restaurants near Diwang Building, one of the tallest buildings in Shenzhen "
Some words are not that important.
Previously, Google only matched words in the query.
Now, we start to say which ones are actually more helpful and which ones are more important.
So Hummingbird is a step in that direction where if you say or type a longer query, then we figure out which words are more important…”
Matt's explanation of Hummingbird's functionality has three key points:
Google no longer relies solely on matching keywords in search queries.
Google can identify which words in a query are important and which are not.
Hummingbird is a step toward understanding queries more precisely.
The Hummingbird algorithm did not initially affect SEO
As mentioned earlier, some SEOs recommend updating web pages usa phone list to match longer, conversational search queries.
But just because Google is learning to understand conversational search queries doesn’t mean web pages need to become more conversational.
In the video recording of the 2013 Pubcon keynote mentioned above, Matt goes on to point out that Hummingbird does not affect SEO.
Matt observed:
“Now, there’s been a lot of articles written about the Hummingbird algorithm, and even if people just know the code name, they ask, how does Hummingbird affect SEO?
Even if people don't know what Hummingbird is, they'll still write 500 words describing how Hummingbird affects SEO.
And in fact it has little impact.”
The impact of the Hummingbird algorithm on search is subtle
Matt went on to describe how the changes introduced by Hummingbird were subtle and non-disruptive.
He said the impact of the Hummingbird update was wide-ranging, but the effect itself was small.
Matt explains:
“It affected 90% of queries, but the impact was so small, and a month after we launched it, people didn’t even notice.
So it's a subtle change that you don't have to worry about. It's not going to rock your world like pandas and penguins did.
It just makes the results slightly better, especially for those long-tail queries or very specific queries, it makes the results much better.”
Hummingbird and long-tail keywords
Katz went on to discuss Hummingbird, describing its impact on sites that target extremely specific, long-tail keywords.
To better understand what Matt Cutts is talking about, we have to stop here and talk about long-tail phrases, because this part of the Hummingbird update has an impact on some SEO practices .
Long-tail keywords are search phrases that are not searched very often.
Many people associate the long tail with keyword phrases that contain a large number of words, but this is not the essence of the long tail .
In the context of SEO, long tail simply describes keyword phrases that are rarely searched.
While some long-tail phrases may contain a lot of words, the number of words in a search query is not the defining characteristic of a long-tail search phrase.
The rarity of a phrase’s frequency as a search query determines what is a long-tail search query.
The opposite of a long-tail search query (such as divorce lawyers in Luohu, Shenzhen) is a main phrase (that is, the core keyword: such as lawyer, law firm) search query.
Core phrases are keyword phrases with high search query volume.
With so many people using the internet, spammers found it easy to rank for rare search queries, so they began targeting millions of long-tail search phrases in order to attract thousands of website visitors per day and make money from advertising.
Before Hummingbird came along, many legitimate sites also frequently targeted rare keyword phrase combinations for the same reason as spammers, because they were easy to rank for.
After Project Hummingbird, Google began using some of the techniques that Bill Slawski reviewed in his article on Google patents.
The change in how Google handles long-tail keyword phrases introduced with the Hummingbird algorithm had a profound impact on the way content is written, as many SEO service providers realized that focusing on thousands of granular long-tail search queries was unprofitable.
Cutts explained the long-tail aspect of the Hummingbird update:
“So unless you’re a spammy content creator and your goal is ‘how many SEOs does it take to change a lightbulb’ and you’ve got all the keywords and you’ve got 15 variations and you’ve got a page for each keyword, you know.
If you’re doing those really long-tail things, then it might affect you.
But generally speaking people don’t need to worry too much about hummingbirds.”
While he was assured that the change would not affect legitimate websites, Hummingbird did affect some legitimate, non-spammy sites that optimized their pages for highly specific search queries.
Hummingbird is a step toward conversational search
Since Hummingbird was a rewrite of an older algorithm to make it more precise and faster, it can be seen as a step towards today's more modern search engines.
Gone is the one-to-one match between keywords in search queries and keywords on web pages.
Combined with other improvements, such as the introduction of the Knowledge Graph, Google is now able to gain a deeper understanding of the meaning of user search queries and the true content of web pages.
This is a huge improvement over old search engines that matched keywords in a search query to the content of a web page.
Improvements introduced by Google Hummingbird may make this direction possible.
Although Cutts believes the initial effects were modest, the changes ultimately resulted in a more robust colloquial search experience, with a profound impact on which pages were ranked and which were not.
After the Hummingbird algorithm, search innovation accelerated
What we know about Hummingbird is that: it helps Google better understand conversational search queries; it is a rewrite of the old Google core algorithm; it helps Google understand the context of search queries; and Google improves its ability to answer long-tail search queries.
In the months following the release of the Hummingbird update, Google’s algorithm underwent a number of significant changes.
User Intent
Of course, when the conversation is about understanding user search queries, we are now entering the realm of understanding user intent.
Being able to remove extraneous words and understand the meaning of a search query is one step closer to understanding user intent.
Quick Conversation Search – June 11, 2014
Conversational search started to gain popularity in the spring of 2014, about six months after Hummingbird launched.
At that point, Google will be able to integrate current events into search results.
Google Hummingbird is named for its speed and accuracy.
The new feature enables Google Search to display sports scores in real time.
Nothing is faster than real time, and sports scores are an example of precise information.
Ok Google Launches – June 26, 2014
A few weeks later, Google launched its “Ok Google” conversational search product.
It can be said that the launch of the "Ok Google" voice command marks that Google has finally achieved its goal of providing a truly conversational search experience.
Conversational search depends heavily on understanding what people mean when they ask a question. This is a huge leap forward.
Many other breakthroughs in conversational search followed.