To celebrate its 15th birthday, tech giant Google has unveiled an update to its search algorithm that would affect 90% of queries. But before the SEO industry could go into meltdown - Google SVP Amrit Singhal revealed that the update had been in place for almost a month.

Dubbed "Hummingbird", the update is designed to better answer longer, more specific queries, moving closer to voice-activated, conversational and informal questions.


On Google's Inside Search blog, Singhal wrote: “You can pull up your phone and say: “Tell me about Impressionist artists.” You’ll see who the artists are, and you can dive in to learn more about each of them and explore their most famous works. If you want to switch to Abstract artists, you can do that really easily with our new filter tool.”

Google's unified design across multiple devices aims to improve colloquial, real-time results, as opposed to similar algorithms designed to better index the web. 

In other Google news, their European anti-trust battle has taken a new turn; with the previously entrenched Vice President of the European Commission has softened his stance in light of new competition proposals. 

 In a speech delivered today in Brussels, Almunia said:

"Although I cannot describe the details, I can tell you that the new proposal more appropriately addresses the need for any commitments to be able to cover future developments. Therefore, the new proposal relates to queries entered in Google in whatever form –whether they are typed or spoken – and irrespective of the entry point or the device."

“In my opinion, the new proposal makes these links significantly more visible. A larger space of the Google search result page is dedicated to them. Rivals have the possibility to display their logo next to the link, and there will be a dynamic text associated to each rival link to better inform the user of its content,” he said.

“Google has offered to cease to impose any written or unwritten obligations that will prevent advertisers from porting and managing search advertising campaigns across Google's services and competing services."