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The latest buzz in the online marketing industry has been around Google's announcement last month that they had changed their algorithm to "Hummingbird".
What is Google's Algorithm?
Google, as well as other search engines, have a code and a list of things they look for to determine which sites should rank for which terms. Robots crawl sites to determine how well they fit into the requirements. There are over 400 different criteria that are looked for to determine where a site ranks for a key phrase.
Since the beginning, Google has been making modifications to this algorithm in order to improve their results and deter spammers. The Penguin and Panda updates are a couple of major modifications Google has made to the algorithm in recent history. Both of these updates simply made changes to the algorithm that was already in place. "Hummingbird", however, is an entirely new algorithm that has replaced the old one.
Why did Google change to Hummingbird?
Google has said that the main goal of this new algorithm is to make the search engines more human friendly. They want to be able to answer complex questions and respond to more conversational searches.
One of the other major changes Hummingbird has made is to include the Google Knowledge Graph in their search results. The goal is to instantly give searches the answers they're looking for. For example, if someone was typed in "how many calories are in an apple?" Google now answers the questions right away and provides information about apples in the upper right hand corner of the screen.
This type of result is now showing up for a wide variety of searches including comparison searches, general animal/food/event searches and more. To see more on what is showing up in the search results try some of the following searches: "poodle vs yorkie", "nfl schedule", or "beer".
What does this mean for rankings and SEO?
Hummingbird replaced the old algorithm over a month ago and so far rankings have not been drastically affected. It appears that all of the same factors are still important to ranking well and not much has changed.
However, the algorithm is changing the way 90% of searches will appear. The biggest affect of the algorithm change for businesses will be the amount of clicks that are going to be lost due to the knowledge graph information. Sites that were previously getting a lot of traffic for searches like "calories in an apple" or "dogs" are now going to see significant drops in the number of clicks they're getting. Viewers will no longer need to go to websites to get the information they need.
Because of this loss in organic traffic it's going to be more important than ever to start finding new ways to get viewers to your site. Having a great content marketing strategy is going to become more and more necessary as things keep changing. Providing viewers with information and advice they can't easily find elsewhere is going to be extremely important in order to help maintain traffic. Social media and other online advertising plans will also be helpful.
As can be seen by Hummingbird, Google is certainly beginning to make changes that are affecting businesses drastically. It's important to keep an eye on the changes that are being made and to take a proactive approach to ensure that your business keeps seeing sustainable growth.