Hummingbird (announced September 26, 2013) — near-total rewrite of the core algorithm; shifted from keyword matching to query-intent understanding; affected ~90% of searches

Claim: Announced September 26, 2013 (running ~a month prior), Hummingbird was a near-total rewrite of Google's core algorithm — the biggest since 2001. It shifted from matching individual keywords to understanding the meaning and intent of whole queries ("strings → things"), supported by the Knowledge Graph (announced May 2012). Affected ~90% of searches.

Source: Google announcement at 15th-birthday press event, September 26, 2013; Search Engine Land coverage.

Confidence: Verified.

Why this matters for Candid: Began rewarding content that uses natural language and answers the question the user actually has, not the keyword they typed. Foundation for the BERT (2019) / MUM (2021) line.