What do you think about the Google latest Search Engine update called the Hummingbird Algorithm?

I don't think you need to protect yourself from Hummingbird. It seems like it was built with the user in mind, and thus it actually helps good content come up higher in SERPs. It's important to remember that Google has also encrypted keyword data, and while they claim this was to protect users, an SEO strategist named Kate Hudson (not of the acting fame!) suggested that this move might have been to remove the perceived importance of keyword density from marketer's minds. Hummingbird takes into account semantics, natural language, and interrogative words (who, what, when, where, how, why) so it should allow users to ask long-tail questions. Thus, content should answer these questions. I think Hummingbird will further bridge the gap between product/service and consumer/user. It will force companies to get to know their audiences even more. Spinnakr spoke to 5 SEO experts about what Hummingbird and 100% encrypted search queries will mean to the digital marketing world. Their answers are definitely worth checking out. Great insights and tons of differing opinions... http://spinnakr.com/blog/brand-marketing/2013/10/spinnakrtalks-5-seo-experts-weigh-in-on-hummingbird-encrypted-search/

Well, Hummingbird is not a penalty-based update. So you have to investigate deeper the reason of the decrease in traffic. It wasn't aimed at cleaning up the SERP from spam and stuff. Hummingbird is all about quality search aimed at the real meaning of the query and giving the right answer according to this meaning. Please welcome to read the guide that was made by my colleagues, where we explained how we see this update and its meaning for SEO. http://www.link-assistant.com/news/google-hummingbird-update.html

Hummingbird is NOT an update comparable to Penguin or Panda. http://www.webpronews.com/hummingbird-is-googles-biggest-algorithm-change-in-12-years-2013-09. The first change that caught my attention was encryption. All Google search queries are now encrypted, i.e. it is no longer optional to connect to Google search by https instead of http. For usersSSL makes Google search safer, in a general sort of way. For webmasters Keyword data is not as accessible as it was prior to Hummingbird. http://searchengineland.com/google-keyword-tool-is-officially-dead-replaced-by-keyword-planner-170745. Now, certain archival keyword data can only be accessed by Google AdWords customers. Google Analytics is free; Google AdWords is not. Functionality such as broadmatch are no longer available. This will negatively impact SEO using Google free services and drive more webmasters toward use of non-free Google services instead. Of course, there are alternatives to non-free Google services, such as (free) Bing Webmaster. Unfortunately, we no longer have Yahoo! as a second alternative. Matt Cutts and others have said that Google emphasis is changing from strings to things. In 2012, there was a brief ripple among semantic web observers, when Google announced its Knowledge Graph. Thus, Hummingbird seems consistent with the long-extant intent to have a web of things, the semantic web, rather than keywords and text strings.

Rest assured, Google is always seeking to provide the very best user experience possible. If you goal and focus is good content that betters the internet, then you are in safe hands. However, if you have spammy products or content, then chances are these types of updates will drastically effect your site ranking.

To be honest you must deep dive into device hardware change to find real challenges behind this move. Yes indeed Google wants to stop system gaming by focusing more on search intent and semantic queries to find best web entities. That's the future of results no more text containing keywords with special density which is easy to spam with keyword stuffing and optimized anchor texts. This Hummingbird is the future of Google algorithm which will rely less on text keywords and will rather focus on relationship between entities in a semantic way such like the knowledge graph. Google now is another product that Google wants to push in order to bit dfinetly competition (if any) when i can predict your search and since then as said the results are more personalized. However, and Amit Singhal was pretty clear on this, Hummingbird should address the problem of accuracy when answering natural language question as used with our phones via voice search. This is the biggest challenge where we expect Google to understand what we look for even with keywords absents or misspelled. Even the sentence could be much much longer such like  "where is the nearest restaurant and less expansive". Immediately, it will impact of course long tail key-phrases/key-words search as it will no more focus on words but rather on meaning, and it will push low content in the mean time down in SERPs. So, to recap, hummingbird is the same version than Caffeine within a new semantic web where it started by knowledge graph. Here you can find a presentation about http://www.slideshare.net/meding44/knowledge-graph-et-seo-juin-2012-par-mohammed-alami I gave 2 years ago but in french.