We reported a few weeks ago on Google’s big infrastructure change known as “Caffeine” and what it meant for SEOs and webmasters. Caffeine has been in the works for quite a while with few details being released to the public in August for feedback purposes. A pilot version was launched last November.
Caffeine is a change in the index, or infrastructure of Google. Unlike the “Mayday” update, it’s not changing the algorithm in any way…it’s simply changing how sites are indexed on their servers. Since content on the web is blossoming and getting more complex, Google felt it needed its index to evolve with it so it could return the most relevant, up-to-date results to its searchers.
In a nutshell, the following are the main things you need to know about Caffeine:
- It’s NOT a ranking change. You shouldn’t see any major ranking changes from this
- It DOES change how Google indexes pages – speed, scalability and how deep they can get into a site
- It should now deliver fresher results
- Search results should go deeper over time
Before, the old index consisted of several layers, each of which was updated at different times and frequencies. When refreshing a layer, Google would have to analyze the entire web which caused a delay between when new content was discovered and when it was made available to a searcher.
With Caffeine, Google will now analyze the Internet in small portions and continuously update the search index on a global basis. As the spider finds new pages or information, it can automatically be added to the index, making it available immediately.
Caffeine can index pages on an enormous scale – its server takes up over 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database. It adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes a day. To compare, you would need 625,000 of the largest I-pods to store that much information.
As with anything, there is some controversy as to the effects of this. Some comments on different forums discussing the new infrastructure claim Google is making a smart move, staying ahead of the bell curve when it comes to the advancement of websites.
However, others worry about spam and how this could be a great boon to spammers. Since Google is striving to post the most current results, spammers could take advantage of this by copying other sites’ content. Some have even said this could lead to Google’s demise and only gave them 6 months!!
Either way, we will stay on top of how Caffeine is working and its effect on websites and web searchers. If it is a bad move on Google’s part, we will certainly witness a decline in their search volume.
In the mean time, see Google’s spam chief at the recent SMX Advanced conference explaining Caffeine in this video below.