In September 2013, Google announced Hummingbird the new revised engine that powers Google's search algorithm. It made search faster and more efficient - but it isn't a spam algorithm. Spam algorithms may plug into the overall algorithm, but Hummingbird is not a spam algorithm.
John Mueller of Google reiterated that the other day on Twitter saying "all our algorithms have to deal with spam, but Hummingbird isn't specifically for spam."
@Ryosuke_Shiga @methode All our algorithms have to deal with spam, but Hummingbird isn't specifically for spam.
— John Mueller (@JohnMu) November 10, 2016
Google actually said something similar back in January 2014, that Hummingbird isn't to blame for your rankings drop. But Google also said Hummingbird did impact 90% of searches - so not sure many believed it had no impact.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
