Has the Hummingbird Changes Effected the accuracy of MOZ?
-
Hello,
I am new to the forum. Can anyone tell me if the recent Hummingbird Changes have effected the accuracy of MOZ? Specifically, keyword comparison of competition.
Thanks,
Derek
-
Unfortunately, there's a lot about Hummingbird we don't know right now. I think Danny Sullivan's FAQ piece is the closest we have to reliable information, but that still leaves a lot of holes:
FAQ: All About The New Google “Hummingbird” Algorithm
Google claims that Hummingbird is a substantial rewrite of the core algorithm (more than just your typical update), and yet we haven't seen large-scale movements on many client rankings. So, what's going on? A couple of things, I think:
(1) As Peter said (and this seems to be pretty well confirmed), Hummingbird changes how Google interprets some queries, especially natural language queries, and attempts to find relevant results based on a more complex, semantic analysis of phrases, and not just keyword matching. It's unclear how this practically impacts your average query today (especially head terms and the "chunky middle"), but as voice-based searches become more common and people get used to natural language queries, the impact will increase over time.
(2) Hummingbird seems to have increased Google's ability to use historical information to personalize queries. This extends a long-term evolution and means that any given person might see a different result for an ambiguous query based on previous queries. Even now, searches like "weather" bring up local information, whereas they used to bring up generic information (like weather sites). Practically, we're not seeing this personalization impact affect a ton of queries yet, but we will over time. There are ways to check ranking using context and limited personalization, but it's technically very difficult. This is certainly a concern for rank-tracking tools, including ours (and something we're thinking about even now).
(3) Finally, I suspect Hummingbird laid the groundwork for an expansion of Knowledge Graph, not only in its pairing to more queries, but in how Google extracts data from the index to create answers. I'm seeing many examples in testing where Google is pulling answer-like information from websites beyond its current data partners. This is speculation, and it may not be connected to Hummingbird, but these changes are definitely coming.
(1) and (2) impact rank-tracking directly, whereas (3) impacts how we view ranking and signals the need to go beyond just counting blue links. We take both trends seriously, but getting from here to there is a gradual process, not just for technical reasons, but because our mindset as SEOs has to evolve.
From a competitive standpoint, you won't see huge changes in the short term. If a change impacts any given query, that impact is felt for both you and your competitors, in most cases. There may be isolated examples where a re-interpretation of a query means that you or your competitor rise or fall in ranking relative to the other, but our tools would see that and I expect that's a relatively small amount of searches right now. At this point, we're keeping our eyes open and trying to predict where Google is headed. Now that Moz Analytics is launched, we're working hard to be more agile and iterate new functions in smaller chunks and at a faster pace.
-
I don't think the Hummingbird update was specifically targeted at to improving Google Instant, but I guess it is likely that will receive an improvement because of Hummingbird. It's not something I have noticed to be honest, but it makes sense that it would.
Peter
-
Very well said Peter if I could I would give you two thumbs up. Do you think Hummingbird was to improve Google instant? I believe it was as it uses more contextual algo patterns to serve up answers to questions posed to the engine. Sorry to get off topic
-
Hello Robert and welcome to the forum
The recent Hummingbird update has no doubt shifted the SEO horizon, but that is true for all of us, Within that, I guess there will inevitably some re-tuning of the Moz tools and their analysis of data, but that is also true of other tools.
Fundamentally, Hummingbird is about Google increasing their focus on ranking information based on a more intelligent understanding of search requests. But Google has been heading that way for some time so there's not been anything totally revolutionary about the Hummingbird update. It's more evolutionary.
Just as there may need to be tweaks to competitor analysis for keywords, there will likely be tweaks to the way on-page optimisation is graded, but to reiterate, this will be true across the whole breadth of tools available on the Internet.
From my perspective, I respect Moz's position and the expertise and comprehensive analysis which both their tools and their team provide.
I hope that helps,
Peter
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Rookie question re Moz Crawl errors after deleting a property from console.
Hi all, I stupidly removed the "http" url of my one website a few days back (it is one of three, the other two being the https), then re-added it around a day later and, while google console isn't reporting back any errors, Moz Crawl is going to town on this now for one critical "4xx" issues, canonicals and various other content issues that I addressed days previously...last Moz crawl performed an hour ago, url deleted and re-added two days ago. I have resubmitted a sitemap, will this smooth itself out or shall I go and make changes? Many thanks in advance.
Moz Pro | | UkPod0 -
Possible Crawling Problem with Screaming Frog and Moz Crawlers
So I'm not sure if what I'm seeing is a problem or not. As of about two weeks ago the Moz crawler has only been able to see www.mysite.com, and none of the links, content, title, ect associated with the page. Essentially the report has one line, what should be the homepage, but it's not able to pull any information from the page but does show a 200 http status code. The report shows nothing blocked by robots or any errors. When I use screaming frog to crawl the site about 75% of the time it just reports one line www.mysite.com with a 200 status code, but again the crawler is not able to actually see the html. The other 25% of the time it works perfectly fine, crawls all pages and sees all meta info and content. There are no errors in Google WMT and everything looks ok there. We have seen a traffic drop the last two weeks but I don't know if this is the reason for it. I can't publicly post the page but if someone has an idea of what might be going on I'd be happy to PM them. Thanks
Moz Pro | | CJ50 -
Moz & Xenu Link Sleuth unable to crawl a website (403 error)
It could be that I am missing something really obvious however we are getting the following error when we try to use the Moz tool on a client website. (I have read through a few posts on 403 errors but none that appear to be the same problem as this) Moz Result Title 403 : Error Meta Description 403 Forbidden Meta Robots_Not present/empty_ Meta Refresh_Not present/empty_ Xenu Link Sleuth Result Broken links, ordered by link: error code: 403 (forbidden request), linked from page(s): Thanks in advance!
Moz Pro | | ZaddleMarketing0 -
How do you get your web site recrawled with Moz without waiting for a week?
My initial crawl was screwed up because of a no follow that needed to be removed. I would like Moz to recrawl the site right away so I can find any other errors.
Moz Pro | | Ron_McCabe0 -
How do a run a MOZ crawl of my site before waiting for the scheduled weekly crawl?
Greetings: I have just updated my site and would like to run a crawl immediately. How can I do so before waiting for the next MOZ crawl? Thanks,
Moz Pro | | Kingalan1
Alan0 -
Simply Report for new requests with Moz Pro Plus
Hi all I'd like to know how can I construct a brief report to send to my potential customers when they first write me asking for general informations and evaluation about their websites and certain keywords for which they want to have a great rank. I'd like to reply them with a short email, with a basic report attached, in which showing them some little details about their (and eventually their competitors) ranking and/or their website situation. It's just a brief professional introduction to our seo and web marketing services. Now I'm doing it manually or with other seo tools, but I have just bought a Moz Pro Plus annually version and I'd like to use Moz for this activity. For example, when I first insert a new campaign, I don't see ranking for days so I can't send rankinh report. Do you have any advice? Thanks.
Moz Pro | | Penny10 -
Is it possible to change the order of my campaigns?
I've just upgraded from a PRO to a PRO PLUS account (as if I need more caffine!) and wondered if it were possible to change the order of the campaigns? They seem to be in alphabetical order - which is no problem, but I'm not actually running all the campaigns - I'm only monitoring a few potential sites, so don't want to see them at the top? it's only a niggle, not a gripe, but wondered it it were possible - or if not, can I show more than 5 campaigns at once rather than scrolling. As always, thanks in advance. G.
Moz Pro | | Gordon_Hall0