Google has announced an update to their algorithm that they’re calling Caffeine because it’s faster than the current version of Google. More accurately, it’s a rewriting of their infrastructure rather than the algorithm itself — a fundamental change in Google like what we saw in 2005 / 2006.
This is good news, considering the number of pages in Google’s index is increasing at an exponential rate. I tested a few keywords in the new version and it definitely is faster — not that I thought the “old” Google was slow at all… Lol Google is still working out the bugs on Caffeine; their goal is to return similar results, but more depth to the results. You’ll notice that the Caffeine version returns more social media pages than the current version, but I honestly can’t say if this is by design (Google’s feeling that social media is more “relevant”), or just a the beta version working itself out. Also fewer images and videos embedded in the normal search, and again, it’s not clear if this is by design or not…
So far, I haven’t noticed a big difference in the results. But I invite you to check it out for yourself. Here’s the Caffeine sandbox if you’d like to plug in some keywords and compare your ranking to the current version of Google.
http://www2.sandbox.google.com/
Here’s some additional insight by Matt Cutts, senior engineer at Google, about the new algorithm.
Very useful information. The text is in German, but the interview itself is English language.
You must log in to post a comment.