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Google announces new Hummingbird search algorithm

by on27 September 2013

Been in use for over a month

A couple of months ago we started hearing complaints from people running smaller sites about Google’s changes to its news algorithm, which seemed to favour bigger sites a lot more than before. The changes were never announced officially, but Google’s changes to the core search algorithm are announced periodically and this morning Google announced the latest one.

The new algorithm is called Hummingbird and as always Google promises it will deliver better search results and allow users to search for more complex queries, something Google likes to call “conversational search”. It allows Google to parse questions a bit faster, and smarter.

Unlike Panda, Penguin and other updates, Hummingbird appears to be an all new algorithm, not a refresh of an existing one.

The new algorithm has been in use for over a month and it doesn’t appear to have caused any drastic changes, or user complaints for that matter. Hummingbird allows Google to process indexed information in a different way, but apparently the indexing process hasn’t been changed much. Google did not say anything about SEO, either.

There are some complaints from the SEO crowd, however, and they insist their traffic is going down, which is good news for legitimate publishers and people who actually create original content. The advent of content mills and downright SEO scams hasn’t gone unnoticed by Google, but the search seems to be unable to do much about it, as it’s always one step behind – and it’s a never ending battle.

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