Google Hummingbird Algorithm Fail: What is the Current Twitter Stock Price?

Google recently launched the new Google Hummingbird algorithm with a huge amount of fanfare. They even announced it in the original Google garage, at a birthday event. Part of what Google is proud of is that we can now ask Google questions and they will understand what we are asking.

But frankly, I am extremely disappointed with what seems to be one simple query, that Google cannot answer properly.

Let’s take a look at my search query today:

What is the current Twitter stock price?

On a day when Twitter is going to start trading on the stock market, Google cannot even understand a basic query. Instead, Google delivers search results that are essentially news about the Twitter IPO, some from even a day ago. All I want is the current Twitter stock price, as in the price right now.

This seems to me that it would be reasonable enough, given the query, that Google would return the actual stock price, just like they do for Google:

Apparently the news about Twitter’s stock price is much more important than answering the question: What is the current Twitter stock price?

Google Hummingbird algorithm. #FAIL Simply because a question about the current Twitter stock price doesn’t in fact bring up the current stock price.

UPDATE: – Once Twitter started trading on the NYSE, Google changed the search results to display the actual Twitter stock price, but only if you search for “Twitter stock price” rather than asking Google something like:

What is the current Twitter stock price?