Google announced today that about a month ago, the company issued a major update to their main search algorithm. It’s called Hummingbird, and it reportedly affects 90 percent of searches worldwide. It’s designed to better handle longer, more complex questions to make results more relevant.
Google search whiz Amit Singhal announced the change at the company’s 15th anniversary celebration in Menlo Park, Calif., but didn’t give many specifics, simply calling it "really big." Google has been moving in the direction of natural language search; its Android voice search can already answer complete-sentence queries, and it looks like the company is taking its flagship search engine down the same path.