Google's Hummingbird and the Entity Search Revolution

Hummingbird & The Entity Search Revolution

Cyrus Shepard

@cyrusshepard

Matthew J. Brown Structured Data and

Semantic Search Authority

With tips from this guy

@cyrusshepard #smxsydney

Let’s go on a journey…


The Many Colors of Google’s Algorithm Animals

vs

Panda and Penguin target spam and manipulative SEO


doesn’t specifically target web spam

The Many Colors of Google’s Algorithm Animals


Many saw Panda and Penguin like this

Where Hummingbird looked like this


A different type of algorithm requires different tactics


Misconceptions


Hummingbird is not:

•  Entities

•  Schema.org

•  Synonyms

•  Knowledge Graph

•  Google Now


Many elements together for improved query and content matching

Synonyms

Schema.org

Knowledge Graph

Conversa7onal Search

En77es

Conversational Search

Traditional Conversation

“how old is Bill Clinton”

“who is he married to”



“how tall is she”



Better Answer Boxes

Answer is bolded, not the keywords

Does this affect traffic?

Does this affect traffic?

(Not for this specific answer box)


But, does this affect traffic?

painful

Query Rewriting


http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/knowledge-base/hummingbird/

Keyword “doubles”

“hairstyle with bangs” vs “bang hairstyles”


Fewer long tail results

Still a long way to go…



When individual keywords take a backseat to meaning…

•  Authority metrics •  Relevance •  Trust

= Stronger sites win

http://mozcast.com/metrics

Decreasing Domain Diversity

A sidetrack into entities @cyrusshepard #smxsydney

Different keywords apply to the same entity

President of the United States

POTUS

Barack Obama Commander in Chief

Michelle Obama’s Husband

First African American President


Disambiguation:

Plant

Same keyword applies to multiple entities

Triples

Triples

Subject Predicate Object

http://www.seoskeptic.com/semantic-seo-making-shift-strings-things/

Object Property Value

Barack Obama Height 6’ 1”

http://www.alchemyapi.com/products/demo/alchemylanguage/

AlchemyAPI


See what entities can be extracted from your content


Gauge how relevant your concepts are


Content tools of the future

From keyword scoring to concept scoring


DBpedia

Twitter industry internet

http://conceptnet5.media.mit.edu/

ConceptNet

Making Connections

The Hard Way 1. The hard way

Schema.org

(hard, but worth it)


MJB Says...

585 million URLs have structured data now, up almost 50% from last year. Schema.org is half of the total.

http://webdatacommons.org/structureddata/2013-11/stats/stats.html

585 million URLs sounds like a lot!

Out of 2.2 Billion Parsed Common Crawl URLs

http://webdatacommons.org/structureddata/index.html

MJB Says…

Almost 75% of the Top 100 sites in Alexa contain structured data markup Over the Top 1 Million sites in Alexa, that drops to 20%

bit.ly/HQraE9

Big Sites: Ahead of the Game


Total adoption may be much lower

http://www.searchmetrics.com/en/searchmetrics/press/schema-org-in-google-search-results/

“Only 0.3% of the studied domains were found to include schema.org integrations.”

But Schema makes big impact in SERPs


This could be because large, successful sites are quicker to adopt Schema.org

Does Schema.org give sites a ranking boost?


http://moz.com/search-ranking-factors

Summer 2013 Ranking Factors study says “no”

This study happened a few months before Hummingbird.

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

With Schema.org Without Schema.org

Searchmetrics study says “maybe”


Higher average ranking

Tools and Tips to Assist

The Granddaddy of Data

https://www.freebase.com/

MJB Says…

Roll your own Knowledge Graph

http://www.sindicetech.com/freebase-distribution.html

Marking it up

http://builtvisible.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-generating-rich-snippets/

This stuff is hard

Data already structured in a database is a prime candidate


No free rides


Amazon.com review stars

Amazon.com today


No organic review stars

MJB Says…

JSON-LD lets you send Schema.org markup using JSON instead of HTML

http://www.seoskeptic.com/json-ld-google-knowledge-graph-schema-org-seo/-guide-generating-rich-snippets/

Schema in Meta Tags

*use sparingly


Google Webmaster Data Highlighter

Wordpress Has Lots of Options

http://www.wpuniversity.com/plugin-review-schema-org-wordpress/

Validate with Structured Data Testing Tool

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

New SEO toolbar

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

Top Secret!

Relationships without markup

Keywords

yep, good old fashioned keywords

Title Tag Length 512px


Doesn’t have Schema.org

Still creates relationships

Explore your topic in depth

Does this article provide a complete or comprehensive description of the topic? Does this article contain insightful analysis or interesting information that is beyond obvious?

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/more-guidance-on-building-high-quality.html

Answer more Questions!

•  Ratings •  Reviews •  Poster •  Showtimes •  Description •  Photos •  Trailers •  Actors •  Director •  Cast •  News •  Related Films •  Stills


Build Authoritative Resources


Links

yep, good old fashioned links

The original way to establish relationships online


Build strong content architectures

http://moz.com/blog/how-to-rank @cyrusshepard #smxsydney

Each new piece of content can improve the performance of the previous content

Anchor Text & Co-occurrence

http://justinbriggs.org/phrase-based-indexing-and-semantics


Google+ for Local Connections

http://www.blindfiveyearold.com/knowledge-graph-optimization

Google+ = Relationships Galore!

•  Location •  Name •  Hours •  Website •  Photos •  Contact Info •  Maps •  Reviews •  Phone Number •  Videos •  People •  Category •  Neighborhood

What is Hummingbird optimization?

Hummingbird optimization is SEO

Go kick butt!

Cyrus Shepard

@cyrusshepard

Google's Hummingbird and the Entity Search Revolution

Internet

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