Google's Hummingbird - What is it all about?

Hummingbird Makes Google Interactive Like Human Being

Hummingbird!!!! Isn’t it a nice way to throw a birthday party? Google announced its biggest update of the year called ‘Hummingbird’ on its 15^thanniversary on September 27, 2013. The recent update has been creating a lot of buzz in the SEO world. Many new doubts and questions are being raised in the SEO industry. Alike other Google updates; this new update has also brought some changes in the SEO strategy.

Before delving upon the depth of hummingbird, let us understand its gist.

• The biggest update since 2001.
• Caters to the needs of mobile users.
• Incorporates advanced knowledge graph.
• Human friendly search engine. It gives answers to your query, as if you are communicating with another human being.
• Comparison tool added.
• A step to promote mobile search and voice search.

What has changed

The value of content with rich information and knowledge has increased a lot. The Google has made an effort to shift search from merely the use of simple keywords and links. Now, keywords and links are not the only measures to determine what to show and what not to show in the search results. Knowledge graph is a feature of Google Search that was launched in May 2012. The knowledge graph uses simple logic that when people search for anything, they are anticipating suitable answers to their query and not the web pages. The knowledge graph has carved a way to provide better answers by organizing information about the real world, real people, places and things. Google has built a database of more than 500 million people, places and frequently requested things to offer a summary of imperative information.

Now, the Google remembers the context of the conversation just like you and me. If you don’t believe, then try this.

I typed a query “Show me images of the Statue of Liberty”. And I got this answer from Google…

After this, I typed “How tall is it”, and I got the below result.

It is just like a conversation between human beings. When we meet someone new, we ask “What is your name? How old are you? What do you do? Just like this, Google can also remember the context of conversation now. There is no need to mention anything separately.

Source: http://www.bestwebsitesdesigner.com

Which websites got affected by Penguin 2.0 and why?

Reason 1: Websites with spammy link profile and low quality links.

Solution: Remove these links manually as far as possible. Remove footer links and site wide links. Then, you can remove all the low quality back links with SEOmoz and aherfs, site explorer and back link checker. You may have got these links from low quality directories or spammy domains or from some other resources. Make a file of disavow with disavow tool and remove it with Google webmasters tool. Activate your social media; use Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, to build genuine natural links.

Reason 2: Websites with duplicate content having irrelevant text which focuses on only keywords to fool the search engine spiders. Websites with unauthorized content. According to Google guidelines for webmasters “Create pages, content for users not for search engines”.

Solution: If your websites have unique, quality and original content, then there is no need to worry. But if you have applied copy and paste tactics, then remove this content immediately. Use Google webmaster tool to remove it from Google search results. Now, focus on generating new content for your website. It will take time, but you don’t have any other option.

Reason 3: Anchor texts with exact matches (money keywords) and too many back-links from irrelevant websites. Links from malware-infected sites and pages which are not indexed.

Solution: If you have more than 10 back links from irrelevant websites, then you will get punished. If you get too many back links within a short span of time, then you will definitely get punished. Remove these back-links. Make your anchor text natural. Remove keyword-rich anchors. Use more natural anchor texts, lsi (Latent Semantic Indexing) keywords, associated keywords, brand name, site URL and generic anchors for instance click here, click etc. Build new high quality inbound link with white hat SEO tactics and abide by anchor text rules.

Penguin updates so far

April 24, 2012: Penguin 1

May 26, 2012: Penguin 2

October 5, 2012: Penguin 3

May 22, 2013: Penguin 4 (This fourth implementation is most important, Google refers it as Penguin 2.0 internally)

Penguin 2.0 goes more deep in your website

When the webmasters were still recovering from the impact of earlier versions of Penguin and its tremors, Google and Matt Cutts introduced more impactful Penguin 2.0. This new version is the next-generation Penguin webspam algorithm which affected more than 2.3% of English-US queries. Penguin 2.0 goes deeper inside your website; previous Penguins had hold of your home pages.

This new Penguin has changed the whole scenario of SEO. Now, old spammy tactics won’t work here. This new Penguin will punish paid links, advertorial spam, link spamming, directory listing, spam indexing and enhance the ranking of authorized websites.

Penguin 2.0 focuses on three ‘real’; REAL AUTHORITY, REAL CONTENT and REAL LINKS.

Since the inception of Penguin 2.0, webmasters are going through lots of fluctuations in the SERP. Generally, webmasters who deploy Black Hat SEO tactics are affected by Google updates such as Penguin and can be harmful to the site.

SEO Vs PPC

What is 404 Error & How To Fix a 404 Not Found Error

404 Not Found error messages are frequently customized by individual websites, so keep in mind that the 404 error may show up in just about any way imaginable depending on what website it's shown from.

Cause of HTTP 404 Errors

A 404 error is an HTTP status code that means that the page you were trying to reach on a website couldn't be found on their server.
Technically, an Error 404 is a client-side error, implying that the error is your mistake, either because you typed the URL in wrong or the page has been moved or removed from the website and you should have known.
Another possibility is if a website has moved a page or resource but did so without redirecting the old URL to the new one. When that happens, you'll receive a 404 error instead of being automatically routed to the new page.

How to Fix the 404 Not Found Error

1. Retry the web page by pressing F5, clicking the refresh/reload button, or trying the URL from the address bar again.
2. Check for errors in the URL.
3. Move up one directory level at a time in the URL until you find something.
   For example, if www.web.com/a/b/c.htm gave you the 404 not Found error, move up to www.web.com/a/b/.
4. Search for the page at a popular search engine. It's possible that you simply have the entirely wrong URL in which case a quick Google or Bing search should get you where you want to go.
5. Clear your browser's cache. For example, if you can reach the URL from your phone but not from your tablet, clearing the cache on your tablet's browser might help. Note: clearing the cache didn't work.
6. Change the DNS servers used by your computer but only if an entire website is giving you a 404 error, especially if the website is available to those on other networks (e.g. your mobile phone network or a friend in another city).
7. Finally, if all else fails, contact the website directly.
   

Errors Like Error 404

The following error messages are related to the 404 Not Found error because they're all client-side errors:
400 Bad Request | 401 Unauthorized | 403 Forbidden | 408 Request Timeout

New Approach to SEO - The new Face of SEO

Social Media Cheat Sheet