Google Caffeine – What You Should Expect for the Beta

Over the last few days it was announced that Google will be making changes to its algorithm; a sizable modification which we may have not seen since the likes of Big Daddy and Jagger’s 1-3 in 2006.

Google has stated:

“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: 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. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

Some parts of this system aren’t completely finished yet, so we’d welcome feedback on any issues you see.”

Whilst Matt Cutts claims that most of the change will be on infrastructure, we may see some changes in the search results.

It is certainly an unexpected move from Google, which generally does not give the general public this type of insight, let alone coining a term for it before anyone else does. If you want to see a preview of this work in progress you can here: http://www2.sandbox.google.com

As for searches you will see a reordering of results, however, the change is purported to make searching faster and more accurate – more real-time. As usual Google is not revealing what exactly has been altered. Google have opted to make this change in beta for users to test, calling it a developer’s preview.

Users, as you would imagine, have already begun testing. Mashable has done this and published their results:

- Results did return faster and in some cases doubling the speed at which results are returned
- It does seem that some elements of blended search are further down in the page which could mean that not all elements have been implemented in Caffeine. Mashable even speculate that user activity on some sites may have pushed them higher in the results
- The new results do seem more relevant in some cases and it appears that it could be tightly tied with keywords
- Index size is also increased

In my testing I found that indeed the changes to the pages are not hugely significant. Doing a vanity search the first thing I noticed was that social media sites were more prominent. This may tie in with the result above that user activity may play a role in rankings.

So, what does this mean for SEO?

At the moment it simply means that we must be ready when this change rolls out. Will results have a heavier focus on keywords and user activity? If all elements of blended search are included in Caffeine then it would appear that universal results are being pushed down.

Obviously, as Google has put this out for testing, the end results will likely be very different than the current speculation of changes we are seeing at present.

As Tom Krazit stated on CNET:

“That’s not necessarily indicative of how the results would be presented, once Caffeine goes live, but it is evidence that the update will require those dependent on Google to drive traffic to their sites to study the changes. For now, Google is not sharing many details regarding how it reworked its back-end architecture and indexing process with Caffeine.”

It is still early days – so watch this space.

Further references can be found here:
Google’s New Search Index
Google Caffeine Tests

Tags: Google, google algorithm change, News, SEO