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Has anyone seen a crossover effect on AdWords during the pas month's rollout of Hummingbird?

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reported an organic traffic hit that seemed to peak around Sept 11–12, and several members (, , ) flagged external coverage and seasonality as possible confounders. Below is a concise, practical way to decide whether AdWords/SEM actually “crossed over” or whether you’re seeing coincident but separate effects.

Short takeaway: a paid-auction change caused solely by an organic algorithm update is unlikely. Ad serving and the auction are separate systems. What does happen, though, is behavioral crossover — changes in organic results or query phrasing can shift user clicks and query mix, and that can show up in paid metrics.

Checks to run (in this order):

  • Timeline overlay: align organic traffic, paid impressions/clicks and the specific dates around the observed drop (include at least two comparable date ranges).
  • Search terms report: find queries that gained or lost impressions/clicks.
  • Impression Share / Lost IS (budget vs rank): separates budget constraints from relevance/rank issues.
  • Quality Score components: expected CTR, ad relevance, landing-page experience.
  • CTR, avg CPC, conversion rate by query and device: spot where performance moved.
  • Auction Insights / competitor signals: detect new bidders or aggressive bids.

Immediate, safe remediations: don’t rewrite the whole account on day one. If paid conversions fall with organic, consider a targeted short-term bid/budget increase on high-value queries, tighten match types and negatives to prevent waste, refresh ad copy to match new query intent, and check landing pages for relevance and technical problems. Keep seasonality in mind — as noted, natural traffic swings can mimic algorithm effects.

Bottom line: treat “Hummingbird → AdWords impact” as a testable hypothesis. If the same queries and dates drive both organic declines and paid shifts, behavioral crossover is likely; otherwise investigate budget changes, competitor moves, or tracking errors.

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Member Avatar for Member #949455

Has anyone seen a crossover effect on AdWords during the pas month's rollout of Hummingbird?

Not familiar with that term Hummingbird. Can you explain more in detail or it's a technique?

Edited by Member #949455
Member Avatar for happygeek

See: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/09/26/google_algo_update/

Though Google declined to discuss the technology underlying the algorithm – a depressing break with the past – it did tell us that Hummingbird "makes results more useful and relevant, especially when you ask Google long, complex questions."

Member Avatar for jessicarobort

Now Hummingbird is coming from Google on Google Birthday. Now lets see how it will effect the websites traffic and rankings.

Member Avatar for AnthonyHaney

Thanks - While I see the impact on our SEO, it wasn't exactly a month ago. Instead, it looks like we got hit slowly culminating on Sept 11/12. The question that remains though, is regarding SEM; has anyone seen a flux in that over the past month?

Edited by happygeek because: reformatted
Member Avatar for Austinlanger

As per knowledge Hummingbird will not effect too much to site if site is not containing duplicate content or black hat seo.

Member Avatar for DavidB

See: . . .

There is also an informative post made by Danny Sullivan on Search Engine Land:

FAQ: All About The New Google “Hummingbird” Algorithm
http://searchengineland.com/google-hummingbird-172816

" . . . has anyone seen a flux in that over the past month?"

For my sites, traffic always goes up in September. Summers are very quiet but when school starts up again in September the traffic increases. So it is hard for me to gauge if that traffic change is caused by the algorithm change or the simple fact that students start needed my math tools again.

My own activities don't change in any case. I can't live my life around what Google or doing, or speculation about what changes Google may make in their algorithm. I still have to focus on writing some blog posts, writing programs, participating in a few forums, etc. My activities don't change.

Edited by DavidB
Member Avatar for jessicarobort

I don't know about its effect on Google Adwords/SEM but its effects search querries and its most powerful algo ever and also many people saw its effects when they saw change in web traffic of their sites.

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