Google Caffeine - The Next Generation of Google

Alot of webmasters and SEO’s alike have seen a topsy turvy turn in Google’s behaviour since June 2009. Results seem to have lost clarity due to an issue with Google’s Geographic Targeting not being functional. We have seen lots of odd results popup for our every day searches, including foreign websites, or websites that do not offer services when returned in the area searched.

Everyday house hold searches have been disrupted with what was initially thought of as a massive influx of irrelevant websites using spammy ethics to gain footing, but as time progressed it become clear that Google was up to something. And people werent wrong, Google has been hammering away at its revised version of search, offering a new shakeup in results for the upcoming Google Caffeine release, and before you ask, its not Google’s brand of coffee.

Google Caffeine is Google’s answer to faster, and more reliable search results, along with other added benefits such as frequently updated news being available within hours of it being published.

The Caffeine update, as it maybe referred too is not actually an update alone, but more of a new improved version of Google. The classification of an update is to alter the algorithm for one or more SEO factor in order to enhance results. This new release from Google promises to be more than just a tweak in the Algorithm.

What does this mean for its users?

Lets take a peak, you can access the beta version of caffeine at www2.sandbox.google.com

Faster Results

Ok, so the results at the momment aren’t exactly slow, but for Google’s servers under heavy load, that point of a second makes all the difference. Todays web isn’t about waiting, especially with the introduction of high speed broadband, its important that search engines can deliver, and delivery quickly.

How do search times compare?

Lets look at “Vauxhall Astra”
A search in Google takes: 0.40 seconds on Google UK (Currently)

A search in Google Caffeine takes: 0.08 seconds on Google UK (Caffeine)

Is this really important? We think not, but it might make all the difference for those living on the edge, those who do not have .1 of a second to spare.

More Results

Google UK always returns a huge volume of results, for pretty much anything we search for. This is great as it offers users the ability to scour through more to find what they are looking for. But how do they both measure up against one another?

Google UK - Search Term: SEO

Google UK (Current) Returns 197,000,000 for the keyword SEO, Whilst caffeine delivers over 200,000,000

Google UK (Caffeine) - Search Term: SEO

Google UK (Caffeine) returns 244,000,000 for the keyword SEO.

Google has expanded its index capabilities, even though this doesn’t seem to make alot of sense, after all, you can’t go past page 100 on Google, limiting you to access values of 1000 results.

The reason this is beneficial, is that the larger index means more websites have been allowed into indexes where they have the potential to rank. Behind position 1000 are over 99% of the websites available in Google’s search index. With no limitations on the actual volume of stored websites, Google is free to tinker with the results, and is free to add more results for relevancy checking.

This increased volume of websites will also give Google more sites to use in the evaluation stage. This expansion means that Google has more data to evaluate in order to enhance the quality of search results.

Higher Quality Results

This is by far the most important of all improvements for any search engine. The clarity of search results is exactly what is needed for that search engine to have high visitor retention levels. The demise of search engines such as Altavista, Ask, Lycos, Hotbot, XOOM, AOL and many others has been caused by poor algorithms and poor quality of results.

Any user who has to scour through hundreds of results to find something relevant to their search query is not likely to continue using the search engine, thus the success of Google stems from its powerful algorithm which strips out the spam, and mis leading sites to return good high quality results.

Google Caffeine promises to deliver results that have been refined even further. Google managed to erradicate huge volumes of black hat websites, but sadly, as search engines get smarter, so do the bad guys. Any process that a legitamate white hat SEO engineer can implement, a black hat can follow the same path with different intentions. Google has clamped down on this by imposing strict sanctions from Geographic targeting to Penalisation for those buying links.

Caffeine will be the next step in refining search results, by using new quality factors to determine a websites value and relevancy to various search queries.

Important factors such as domain age, backlink profile and content base will still remain as the primary ranking factors, but the way in which these processes have been implemented will be under further scrutiny.

In the meantime, search results continue to be affected by the apparent disabling of the geographic targeting filter, which has not been functioning for over 2 months. Even regional searches can yield foreign results.

We will keep you posted on our findings while we have an indepth look at Google’s latest projects.