Google introduces the biggest algorithm change in three years

Marking Google's 15th birthday, Hummingbird is the biggest change to the inner workings of the world's most popular search engine since Google's "Caffeine" update in 2010, which sped up Google's indexing of sites and delivery of search results. The Hummingbird update focuses more on Google's Knowledge Graph – an encyclopaedia of about 570m concepts and relationships that allows Google to anticipate facts and figures you might want to know about your search term. Hummingbird isn't an overhaul that Google search users will instantly notice, however. "In general, Hummingbird – Google says – is a new engine built on both existing and new parts, organised in a way to especially serve the search demands of today, rather than one created for the needs of 10 years ago, with the technologies back then," said Danny Sullivan of the search blog Search Engine Land. It will benefit those using more modern forms of search, such as conversational or voice search, where you ask Google a question rather than typing keywords into the search box.