Google Hummingbird: What Is Conversational Search?

If you have read about the recent Google update, the Google Hummingbird algorithm, what is glaring about it is its stress on conversational search. What is it all  about?

Let us say you are looking for images of the famous Great Wall in China.

The instinct is to type in ‘great wall of china images’ on the search bar. This is an instinct universally shared by the majority of the world population hooked on Google searching for everyday answers to their everyday questions. 

However, with the rise of smart phones with speech recognition features, there is a natural shift in search behaviour. Instead of opening your phone’s search engine, it is easier to open your phone’s speech recognition application and communicate your search query with it. Siri, for instance, is a speech recognition application exclusive in Apple phones that allows users to input their query by voice.

Ultimately, when one talks to a phone to search for an answer, the person is not talking in staggered and segmented keywords. Rather, that person will be communicating with the phone using coherent and complete sentences or questions. This is where the Google Hummingbird algorithm enters the scene. 

As search behaviour becomes more ‘humanised’ rather than ‘robotic’, it is important that Google adopts this change in behaviour and incorporate it into its system. Hence, the Google Hummingbird algorithm update. 

Search is definitely dynamic given the devices and technological tools that enter the market. With the significance attached to conversational search, this lends us insight on the importance of great content. Time and again, high quality and original content never become defeated in terms of its relevance and importance to Google. As mentioned earlier, as we inch towards more humanised and rather more intelligent search behaviour, it becomes prudent that content needs to have a context and meaning. It should not only read well to web crawlers, but more importantly, to actual human users who rely on search for everyday life answers.

Moreover, conversational search favours those who are serious and passionate about their content creation efforts. As the search landscape is levelled further and black hat SEO practitioners are slowly given the boot, smart content marketing is slowly finding its rightful place. To establish yourself as a subject matter expert is now more rewarding with the prime importance on conversational search by the Google Hummingbird algorithm.

For content marketers and bloggers alike, this is definitely your year.