Happy Birthday Google! Why didn’t I get a B-Day reminder on G+?
The present to open is an entirely new Search algorithm dubbed “Hummingbird”. This is a complete departure from their previous search updates. Instead of focusing on keywords and meta-data, the things SEO gurus always push, Hummingbird is Google’s first attempt at semantic search. Good SEO will still matter, but good content will matter more.
It’s an ambitious undertaking as computers aren’t always great at judging what we mean by what we say, but ranking content by what its made up of, instead of its keywords, should mean that organic search terms should provide more meaningful results. Users should get better hits now simply by asking the questions they would ask other people. Real live humans don’t like having to parse terms. Now typing “Where can I find the best pie in San Francisco?” should get us closer to eating good pie than before where keywords would’ve been pulled out of that query. Hopefully in execution it should start to resemble the way IBM’s Watson is able to make meaningful responses to conversationally asked questions.
Get the full scoop at Inside Search, or hit up Google.com to try it out, and while you’re there play the Piñata Doodle Game! BIRTHDAY!