SEO is for the (humming)birds
Happy birthday Google! Thank so much for the latest animal themed algorithm update that probably has every Cape Town SEO consultant, what am I saying… every single SEO professional around the wwworld digging down into research & test mode. At least we should be. I know Viperchill is trying to figure things out…
@rafiq need a few more examples to be sure, but basically sites that weren’t caught by Panda or Penguin and should have been
— Glen (@ViperChill) September 27, 2013
As usual Danny Sullivan has the best coverage over at Search Engine Land, he was at the official announcement at the garage where Google started 15 years ago so I’m not going to go into the details of what was announced by Google Search Execs. We’re trying not to make this blog an echo chamber.
What I’d like to look at is the beautiful hummingbird itself and as huge fan of mimicking natural systems and applying lessons learned by watching and learning from them to many things digital. As an aside, hummingbirds do not occur naturally in South Africa, their role in the local ecosystem if filled by the bigger sunbird which often gets confused for hummingbirds.
5 Possible Reasons why Google called the new search algorithm Hummingbird
- Hummingbirds are the tiniest birds in the world. Wearing my tech hat I’d assume Google Hummingbird is the smallest (lines of code and memory process usage etc) algorithm to date.
- Hummingbirds can flash their bright coluors, as well as hide them when needed. In the same way I’d assume Google’s Hummingbird algorithm engine has the ability to adjust search results at a much quicker rate, faster than a topic can trend on twitter even?
- A hummingbird’s brain is 4.2% of its body weight, the largest proportion in the bird kingdom. Google is an extension of my, and many other people brains. Another good reason for calling the Big G’s update Hummingbird.
- Hummingbirds are very smart and they can remember every flower they have been to, and how long it will take a flower to refill.Again Google has an ever growing cache of pages on the web it has crawled and remembers when and how long it takes before those pages on your site are updated. Did you know you can tell Google this info about your website?
- Hummingbirds can see farther than humans. Google knows what’s coming.
- I think you get the idea…
If you’d really like to know more about actual hummingbirds watch the video below.
If you’ve read this far on Google’s birthday Friday afternoon you probably need to make like a hummingbird and float out behind Google tinted wwworld inside your screen. Still have time to kill on a Friday afternoon? Go to Google.com and beat the star piñata and score points in the Google Doodle 15th birthday game. How much has changed in 15 years? As an SEO we’ve already been dancing to Google’s Panda & Penguin tune for years so not much should change in your SEO just because of an announcement like this unless… Happy Friday 🙂