A Beginner’s Guide to Google Hummingbird [2023]

What Is Google’s Hummingbird Algorithm?

Hummingbird is the codename of an algorithm update Google implemented in 2013 to improve search results.

Algorithm here means Google’s complex system of locating and presenting the most relevant results from its index of websites and pages.

Instead of presenting webpages containing searchers’ keywords, Hummingbird aims to help Google understand and match searchers’ intent. That process is called semantic search.

Although search engines regularly tweak algorithms to optimize user experience (UX), Hummingbird was more substantial than previous Google algorithm updates, such as Panda (2011) and Penguin (2012).

Then-Google engineer Matt Cutts described it as a “rewrite of the core search algorithm.”

Using natural language processing and paying closer attention to context and user location, Google made search more conversational. And its results more valuable.

For example, if you searched “Pay taxes to the IRS” before Hummingbird, Google’s top result would have likely been the IRS homepage.

Now, Google directs you to the payments page, even though the search query doesn’t contain the word “payments.”

How Did Google Hummingbird Impact SEO?

The updated algorithm forced site owners to focus on content quality and relevance instead of keyword quantity.

When Google understands search intent, it can assess a page’s relevance using more than just keyword density (the number of times a specific keyword appears on a page compared with the...