Hummingbird
Major overhaul of the core algorithm (already live for about a month at the time of the announcement), geared toward semantic understanding and the intent behind conversational queries.
Key points
- A major overhaul of the core algorithm, already in service around a month before the announcement.
- Oriented toward semantic understanding and the intent of queries.
- Better suited to conversational queries and voice search.
- A shift from keyword-based search to intent-based search.
Analysis
Hummingbird rewrites the heart of the algorithm to better understand the overall meaning of a query rather than its isolated words. Google interprets the relationships between concepts, which improves answers to long, natural-language questions, notably through the rising voice search.
It is the foundation of modern semantic search and, indirectly, a milestone toward today's AI-generated answers. Optimizing for intent, entities and users' real questions becomes more effective than repeating exact keywords.
What to do
- Structure content around intents and real questions rather than keywords alone.
- Cover the entities and semantic field of a topic to answer conversational queries.
- Formulate clear and direct answers, favorable to snippets and AI-generated answers (AEO).
Better interpretation of natural-language queries. A shift from keyword SEO to intent SEO.