Google Announces Caffeine Update – Aug'09

Google has not declared any major changes lately, so we were all looking forward to one anticipating what it would be and how it will affect the rankings?

Our long awaited moment has ended and Google has come up with its latest infrastructure change but, guess what unlike ever times Google has officially declared its Update this time it’s called the “Caffeine” Update. Moreover you are also provided a preview from Google you can have a look at it here Caffeine Update.

This is the next generation architecture for Google’s web search which will improve indexing speed, capability, accuracy and comprehensiveness. This seems to include crawling, indexing and accuracy changes.

From Google:-

“For the last several months, a large team of Googler’s 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.”

We would like to clear that this is not an algorithmic change and is not done with any intentions of changing the SERP’s. This is an infrastructure related change and will not affect the UI (User Interface). A normal user searching for restaurants or pizzaz will not even notice the change in SERP’s layout but the web developers or power searchers might notice some nominal changes.

Words from the Author:

We tried the new search model of Google and noticed that there are some change in the results we compared the results of the New and Old SERPs.

• It gives faster results i.e. returns results in less time.
• Shows better understanding of related words or synonyms.
• There seems to be some minor changes in the SERP’s, which are as Google said “most users will not notice a difference in search results.”
• Wikipedia seems to be demoted.
• Real time results are given more priority then before. E.g. tweets etc are updated real time.
• Seems to have given slightly more weight on exact match domain names.
• An increased weighting on domain authority

You can compare the New and Old SERP’s here Compare Caffeine.

Note: This is analysis done by ZealousWeb – A Web Design Company India, the situation may differ in the actual consequences.