{"id":117090,"date":"2013-10-31T21:09:00","date_gmt":"2013-11-01T02:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/what-the-hummingbird-algorithm-update-means-for-paid-search\/"},"modified":"2024-12-19T16:39:59","modified_gmt":"2024-12-19T21:39:59","slug":"what-the-hummingbird-algorithm-update-means-for-paid-search","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-ca\/insights\/blog\/paid-media\/what-the-hummingbird-algorithm-update-means-for-paid-search\/","title":{"rendered":"What Hummingbird Means for Paid Search"},"content":{"rendered":"

When you lead a paid search<\/a> team, it’s tempting to sit back and breathe a sigh of relief when a major Google algorithm update like Hummingbird is announced. Let the SEO’s handle this one, right? After all, we’re still recovering from Enhanced Campaigns. Tempting, perhaps, but certainly not wise. Any change to the way Google is delivering non-paid results, whether it’s directly related to AdWords or not, will have an impact on how paid search campaigns perform. These updates also give pretty meaningful insight into what the 800-pound search gorilla thinks is important. This insight should drive how we as SEM’s build and manage the client programs that will share search engine results page (SERP) real estate with these non-paid listings.<\/p>\n

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Before we get into it, it’s important to offer a brief summary on what exactly the Hummingbird Update is. Easier said than done. You can read some of DAC’s thoughts on it here<\/u> and a nice summary from Search Engine land here<\/a>, but the main point is that it’s a huge algorithm update (perhaps the biggest in Google’s history) that affects roughly 90% of queries. Just how it affects those queries is not entirely clear at this point (they made it public almost a month after it rolled out, and no one seemed to notice), but it’s obviously aimed at giving searchers far more relevant results, \u00a0drawing on a complex combination of signals to really understand what a searcher is looking for. That tells me that we as SEM’s should be doing the same thing – using the data<\/a> and features at our disposal to deliver more and more relevant results. Let’s look at how.<\/p>\n

Leverage Context<\/strong><\/p>\n

For Google, it’s always been about more than the direct relationship between the words in the query and the words on the pages it crawls. The big idea about analyzing back links is what made Google so much better than every other search engine 15 years ago, and their focus on exceeding user expectations of relevance has given them an insurmountable advantage in the space. The same principals apply to the way they order and present paid listings through AdWords. It’s not just about how much money you’re willing to pay for a click; it’s a combination of price and how relevant you are. Over the years, Google’s organic algorithm has increasingly taken things like location, search history and device type \u00a0into account when ordering and presenting results. For instance, I just Googled “pizza.” I’m sitting in our Rochester, NY office using my laptop. Even though I only explicitly told Google that I want “pizza,” I got three ads at the top of the page with local Rochester phone numbers, an organic listing for a Rochester-based pizza chain and then seven local listings<\/a> for nearby pizza shops. Of the 23 total paid and non-paid listings on the page, 15 of them (including the top 12) are clearly there because of where I am. There are no Google results for the term “pizza” anymore; there are only Google results for me at this moment in this place on this device. In other words, it’s about the context. If I’m to have a successful paid search campaign targeting people looking to order pizza, I had certainly better leverage the things I know about the searcher that go beyond the words the words in the box. As an SEM, what do I know about this person?<\/p>\n