Google’s latest announcement is that for some time now, their engineers have been working on a massive overhaul to Google’s core search technology – codenamed ‘Caffeine’. The update will make Google faster, more efficient, and is widely believed to be a direct response to the increasing threat to its market share presented by Bing and Yahoo.
At this early stage, Google have only released small amounts of information on the details of the upgrades, and our own testing has been limited due to the beta release being solely based on American results. However, the information they have released indicates that this is primarily a behind-the-scenes update, which focuses on improving the user experience by refining the way in which Google processes data.
How will this affect my website?
Whilst specifics are still vague, we can confirm the following:
- Caffeine will be in beta for some time yet, which gives us sufficient time to perform R&D to determine the extent that this will impact search results.
- Search results are returned much more quickly – up to twice as fast in some cases.
- The updated algorithm appears to be applying more weight to the social graph – Facebook, Friend Feed and social bookmarking sites are appearing more predominantly in results, and may be a stronger influencing in ranking factors than was previously the case.
- Google are still testing changes, and are asking webmasters to provide feedback on algorithmic oddities – indication that more change is to come as they balance the adjusted weighting system.
Summary
This isn’t a groundbreaking change – we continue to place an emphasis on building a strong brand, with good content, and a powerful link profile. However, we expect to see social metrics play an increasing role in the search algorithm as well as results, and recommend enquiring about a free website audit to determine where your website exists within the social graph, and to understand how your brand is perceived and discussed online.
Should you have any questions about the Caffeine update and how it may affect your brand online, don’t hesitate to contact us – we look forward to hearing from you.
