What is Google Hummingbird?

By Othello Clooney
In late September 2013, Google announced a new algorithm named “Hummingbird”. Following in the footsteps of previous updates that include Panda and Penguin, Google Hummingbird is causing many webmasters to rethink and revise their SEO and content marketing strategies. As the popularity of smartphones has continued to grow, statistics provided by Telemetrics are now determining that nearly 50% of all online searches now begin on some sort of mobile device. Yelp is reporting the number to be slightly higher at nearly 59%, while both reports state that local searches for restaurants, nightclubs and other entertainment venues are even higher.

Content is King!

Due to this increased use of Smartphones, voice queries are now becoming more common and will soon overtake the traditional typing method. As a result, the old-fashioned SEO technique of “keyword stuffing” is being penalized by the major search engines.

Content needs to be creatively worded so that it is considered helpful and relevant to the online user, communicated in a more natural language that will be found by the voice searches from smart technology. If the content on websites does not provide accurate answers to specifically asked verbal questions, then Google Hummingbird is going to penalize the webmaster. The old ways of “spinning content” in order to try and trick the search engines is only going to backfire more and more as time moves forward.

Content must have Authority

Google is becoming increasingly less trusting of content that is found on the web, a key factor which has led to the new algorithm. As a result, they are now looking for authority in authorship. This can be achieved by linking your content to other outside sources of higher rankings and proven relevance from other trusted websites, blogs, and news articles.

Webmasters who have previously been stealing content from other websites, shoving it through a spinning software, and spitting out a badly-worded duplicate in order to fool Copyscape are now getting caught in record numbers. As you might already guess, this is causing a great deal of stress and strife all over the internet. Authors of relevant content and original material will only gain the respect of the search engines while those who are still practicing under the pre-Google Hummingbird methods are beginning to see huge drops in the page rankings almost overnight.