Hummingbird Google's New Algorithm Update

Google Hummingbird is the new Google algorithm by Google. To celebrate their 15th birthday (September 26, 2013), Google launched a new "Hummingbird" algorithm, claiming that Google search can be a more human way to interact with users and provide a more direct answer. Google claims that its Hummingbird algorithm offers a more natural way to use its search engines.

The new update "Hummingbird" is precise and fast & it has affected 90% of search hits. Google has implemented these changes to provide search results geared around more of the actual phrase typed in, rather than just focus on one or two keywords.

Google's semantic search approach is seeking to provide more accurate search results by both understanding intent and refining results based on context such as location and other data they know about the searcher. Thus with Hummingbird Google is trying to understand the whole query and not the keywords. Amit Singhal, Google VP of Search says "With more complex queries, the algorithm can better understand concepts vs. words as well as relationships between concepts."

What is Google Penguin?

Google Penguin is a new algorithm of Google that was first updated on April 24, 2012. The aim of the Google Penguin is to decrease search engine rankings of websites that violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using black-hat SEO techniques, for example keyword stuffing, cloaking, participating in link schemes, using duplicate content on websites.

After updating Google Penguin approximate 3% websites are affected due to this and they lost their ranking and popularity on Google search.

Here’s the list so far, showing when each Penguin update came out, the percentage of English-languages queries it was said to impact (other languages are also impacted, but we’re using English as a consistent baseline):

1. Penguin 1: April 24, 2012 (impacting ~3.1% of queries)
2. Penguin 2: May 26, 2012 (impacting less than 0.1%)
3. Penguin 3: October 5, 2012 (impacting ~0.3% of queries)
4. Penguin 4: May 22, 2013 (impacting 2.3% of queries)
5. Penguin 2.1: October 4, 2013 (impacting ~1% of searches)