Google Hummingbird And Penguin 2.1 – Two Recent Major Updates

Hummingbird and Penguin 2.1 are major updates announcement by Google, but Hummingbird is Google’s entire ranking engine, whereas Penguin is just a small part of Google.

About Hummingbird

The “Hummingbird” is just a name for Google’s new search algorithm same like Penguin and Panda. This new search algorithm was already executed a month ago, but Google officially announced it on its 15th Birthday. Hummingbird launched at a press conference by Google that held on 26 September, 2013. Google says, this is “fast and precise” so that they have given this code name, which is “Hummingbird” to this search algorithm. It is much smarter, and can answer questions as well as filter the answers and provide searcher’s comparison data quickly. Users do not need to click on web pages now to find answers as the data will be right there for them.

Why Hummingbird Updates:

Google Hummingbird has made search more conversational, so searchers will be no w able to “ask questions” to Google. Yes, it is possible that Google users can verbally ask questions by using advanced voice queries.  Users will receive far more refined answers irrespective how long as well as detailed user searches are.  With “Hummingbird” updates, it becomes very important for websites owners to provide more and more information about their sites as possible so this new search algorithm can “understand” it.

For instance, suppose you ask a question “Where can I sell my old TV online” or “What is the nearest place to buy the Nokia Lumia to my home” then this Hummingbird update will understand your question and reveals more accurate and precise search results. However, the traditional search from Google focuses on finding matches for words “TV and Sell” or “Buy and Nokia Lumia”.  As a result, Hummingbird search algorithm is more communicated with Google users. According to Google, “Hummingbird is paying more consideration to every single word in a question, a complex query or the complete sentence rather than on specific words. The prime aim of this is that page matching the meaning instead of just a few words.

Impact of Penguin 2.1 Update:

However, Penguin 2.1, which is also called as Penguin 5 is a slightly improved version of Google’s “Penguin 2, and was rolled out on 4 Oct, 2013. Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web spam team tweet to confirmed, “Penguin 2.1 launching today and will affect 1% or 0.1 of searches to a noticeable degree. It’s a fifth Google penguin update and earlier releases of Penguin were:

Matt Cutts also cleared about penguin that all earlier updates of Penguin look at the home page of a site, but this newer update of Penguin2.1 goes much deeper.

New Updates Means for Webmasters:

Google also says cleared that panda and Penguin updates will remain major factor behind ranking fluctuation in the future, but not Hummingbird. Penguin 2.1 is a relatively minor change to the previous Penguin update filter, and if your site were hit by Penguin, then you require to do things such as disavow bad links to recover. We like to remind our blog here that has been written about what to do after Google panda and penguin (we recommend to study if still didn’t). However, if you are taking right action and seeing an improvement in traffic that means you’ve escaped Penguin. There is no need to worry about on SEO strategy.

Now SEO has become more important part for every website especially for whose primary goal to gain business traffic to the website otherwise competitor will surely defeat and win online customers.