Hummingbird (2013): what Google changed and what it means now

What Google changed#

Google revealed Hummingbird on 26 September 2013 at a press event marking its 15th birthday. It was not a filter like Panda or Penguin but a new overall search algorithm. Google told Search Engine Land that Hummingbird paid more attention to each word in a query, so that the whole query, its meaning, is taken into account rather than particular words.

“Conversational search” was the main example Google gave: longer, spoken questions where matching meaning matters more than matching keywords. Google said the new engine was built from existing and new parts, and still used PageRank, Panda and Penguin.

When it rolled out#

Google gave no exact date. At the event it said it had started using Hummingbird “about a month ago.” Google’s ranking systems guide now dates it to August 2013. This page uses 1 August 2013 to stand for that month; the exact day is not known.

Google’s own Inside Search post from the event covered new Knowledge Graph and mobile features but did not mention Hummingbird. The algorithm was confirmed in statements to the press, which is why this page cites Search Engine Land as the record. The name is Google’s, chosen, it said, for being “precise and fast.”

What is known about its impact#

Google did not publish an impact figure in its own posts. Search Engine Land noted that Hummingbird had been live for about a month before the announcement without any wave of complaints about worse results. Treat any winner or loser percentage attributed to Hummingbird as a third-party estimate.

What site owners should do#

At launch, Google said there was nothing new or different SEOs or publishers needed to worry about, and that its guidance stayed the same: original, high-quality content. Hummingbird is now listed under retired systems in Google’s ranking systems guide, “a major improvement to our overall ranking systems made in August 2013.” RankBrain and BERT, which came later, are listed as current systems. The advice that follows from Google’s current helpful content guidance:

• Write for the question a person is asking, not for a list of exact keywords.
• Answer the whole query, including the follow-up a reader is likely to have.
• Use natural language; Google’s systems match meaning, so exact-match phrasing is not required.

How to check whether it affected you#

This is historical: Search Console keeps 16 months of data, so it cannot show 2013. Because Google gave only a month, there is no clean before and after window. If you kept analytics from then, compare July 2013 with September 2013 and look for shifts on long, question-style queries. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists the other updates of 2013.

Related updates#

• The Payday loan update was the confirmed change before it in 2013.
• RankBrain was the next ranking system Google revealed, in 2015.
• The BERT update extended Google’s language understanding in 2019.