It is hard for anyone who follows the search industry to escape the news about Google “Caffeine.” Here is what small businesses and organizations need to know:
- Google is updating their search algorithm. The search algorithm is the mathematical equation that Google uses to determine which websites to show for the keywords that the searcher typed in. This update project has been code named “caffeine.”
- Google Caffeine focuses on making the Internet faster. Google’s goal is to make their search engine faster. They are accomplishing this by providing tools and technology to website developers that enable them to improve their websites speed. What this also tells us is that Google Caffeine is going to start giving weight to websites that load faster. So, make your website faster and improve in the search results!
- Like any update Google does, Caffeine is going to improve the accuracy of your search results. They are doing this in many ways, but it tells us that keyword strings are even more important then they were before.
- Google’s index size is going to increase. Their index size is the amount of webpages that Google has in its database to reference when you perform a search. For example, if you do a search for the word “dog” you will see in the upper right this:
Before Caffeine
You will notice, the same search performed with Google Caffeine provides nearly 7 times as many indexed results.
After Caffeine
- Search is moving into real-time. Real-time searching means that instead of a search engine referencing their own database of your websites that it crawled and stored data on sometime in the last 30 days, the search engine is going to be searching webpages directly in real-time. For example, if you do a search today for a subject, you might find Twitter or Facebook postings, but those postings will be older in time. By searching in real-time, a search engine would be able to provide up-to-the-minute content in its search results. Twitter and Facebook are known for launching their own real-time search engines in the near future, and Google will have to compete. Although Caffeine is not including a real-time search feature, there is reason to believe that the algorithm update will be considering webpages that include more up-to-date and fresh content. This means that if you are not updating information on your website on a regular basis, you better start.
- Google Caffeine will not be launching until after the holidays. It will launch in one of Google’s data centers and will slowly begin to roll out across their network after it has been sufficiently tested.
- Lastly, DON’T PANIC! Business owners and website publishers should not panic. You shouldn’t see a dramatic difference in the search results in the immediate future, but you should be aware of the changes that are forthcoming and make sure that you focus on your website in 2010! Get your site up to speed (literally), update your website and put in a plan to keep fresh and up-to-date content on it (a blog would be a good solution), and lastly, if you are not on Facebook and/or Twitter - get on it!
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