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Hummingbird Pivot and Context Identifiers

With all the recent news regarding Hummingbird, conversational search, and context identifiers, it appears a storm is brewing in the SEO world.  Will the culmination of all this activity form a larger system or break apart into a simple weather glitch?  Let’s review the recent developments and their correlation to each other.

The Perfect Storm

With Google US currently holding nearly 60 percent of the market share (Microsoft/Yahoo share around 30%) it seems as though nothing has changed. And with Google’s total Advertising Revenue on pace to eclipse 45 billion in 2013 (approx. 15% Y/Y), is there reason for concern?

A “perfect storm” is an expression that describes an event where a rare combination of circumstances will aggravate a situation drastically.

Just as trust and authority became the direction of strategy over the past few years, Google came along offering more “transparency” to web masters and the public in the form of additional insights related to refreshes and algorithm updates. All this seemed to be on the up and up, but was received with mixed reviews.

How Do You Search?

I recently watched my wife search on Google for Thai food in our area. It frustrated me to see the way she searched, in a long tail question form typed directly in Google Search, “where is the best thai restaurant in burlington nj”. I’ve spent years and years developing strategies around search and other keyword searches.

But I am not so naïve to think people don’t search in different ways. I certainly search different and would most likely have searched , “thai restaurant 08016” or similar. My thought has always been this gives me a quicker path to my answer or need. Maybe. Maybe not. So, since there is no wrong or right way to search, is there a wrong or right way to SEO?

See the two example query results below – I still prefer my results.

 

query1Query:  “Where is the best thai restaurant in Burlington NJ”
query2Query: “thai restaurant 08016”

With both of these queries we are given much different looking SERPs, but similar information.  I certainly prefer the results provided from the direct query, but the conversational query does a good job of presenting a direct result.  The question then: are these results being affected by Hummingbird or other contextual identifiers?  And if so, will SEOs be able to determine how to optimize for better results?

The Hummingbird Pivot

There has not been an outcry from the update, which reportedly affected 90% of search queries. To be fair, the debate over whether Knowledge Graph plays a large roll in Hummingbird is still waging. Gianluca Fiorelli dissects with his interpretation of how Google solved the need of delivering the best results based off semantic search.

I tend to agree with this well thought out interpretation, which leads us further down the road toward context identifiers and inverse document frequency. The “Ranking Based on Reference Contexts” patent granted this month reassured me that as much as anchor text is becoming irrelevant, the windows to the left and right of the actual link have become more important.

This brings me back to my example illustrated above about the relation of results based upon query type. Specifically, related to conversational query vs. a direct match query. Identifying how a person searches is not something that is available with limited time and resources and not truly tested to be effective, especially now given (not provided).

But what is so amazing about Hummingbird is the infrastructure to better allow social signals as a ranking factor. So, is Hummingbird related to synonyms and context, conversational search and/or social signals?

Context Identifiers

Following the (not provided) roll out to almost 100% it is quite difficult to understand whether the query strings are bringing traffic. Although Google does allow for organic keywords to be seen through AdWords, along with several Webmaster Tools workarounds, and creative processes generated throughout the community.

It yet another irregular paradigm by Google. Build great sites with great content, have off-site contributions and you will be rewarded. However, how can we measure traffic from poor keywords effectively without this data?

What’s Our Next Step?

So, should a digital marketer take the community interpretation at its word and go with a strategy of context identification, synonyms, and references? I continue to see positive results given the strategies of the community as well as those listed within this piece. But, it is extremely rough on the seas and I still see the potential for the perfect storm.

Featured image provided with creative commons:  morse87
Screenshots taken 11/19/2013 at Google.com

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Todd Bailey Owner at PUSHSTAR DIGITAL

Todd Bailey has over 20 years of digital marketing strategy development & execution. He is the owner of the PUSHSTAR ...

Hummingbird Pivot and Context Identifiers

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