No Google haven’t brought out their own Google Branded Coffee, so the likes of Starbucks and Costa Coffee can relax again and get back to trying to occupy every available street corner.
The announcement was made on the 10/11th of August that Google had been working for months on a new update for it’s search engine. Code named: Caffeine.
SEO experts hold their breath everytime an Algorithm changes because it affects rankings and they could see their months of work, getting higher up the rankings and developing techniques to beat their competition in the SERPs, all destroyed in a matter of minutes. Others may experience a caffeine kick and jump up the listings.
So the SEO community breathed a sigh of relief when it was announced that the Caffeine Update is similar to the Big Daddy Update back in Dec 2005 and that the changes made were “under the hood”. Google describe this update as;
“A next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.” – Google Blog.
Since the initial announcement we have had a month to test the New Google to see how things compare to the old. You can see how your site ranks on both the current Google and Google Caffeine here. WebProNews also managed to get an interview with Matt Cutts about Caffeine at San Jose Search Engine Strategies 2009, where he explains the changes made to the new structure of Google.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovbjCsQtfCk&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fuser%2Fientry&feature=player_profilepage#t=41[/youtube]
What does this mean for the average Googler?
The answer: Not really that much. The aim of this update, as with all updates, is to improve the users experience and find more accurate results for them. The person using Google wont notice the fact that speed of the search listings has now be increased, with results returned in 0.19 seconds rather then 0.3, and the number of indexed sites has increased from 752,000 to 1,220,000 (searches done on my name, we all do it), but it does show that the update has improved the indexing capabilities and this should improve the ease for the user to find what they are looking for.
As mentioned earlier on the Google Blog, the new infrastructure is just the first step, meaning that there are more changes to come. Does this mean an algorthim change? Maybe a more decisive move to take on twitter and its ability to provide breaking news?
Whatever Google has planned for the future, the search engine community are watching carefully and preparing for when the Caffeine Update goes live (date yet to be announced).
