Google Caffeine Going Live After Holiday Season

by Kerry Dean on 11/10/2009 at 11:33 am in Industry News, Opinion Editorial, SEO

Over the past few months, Google has been tinkering with a new project, codename Caffeine. Because we are fanatics about SEO and Google algorithm changes, we have been keeping a close eye on the changes in Caffeine. Google described this new Caffeine project as the “next generation architecture for Google’s web search”. It really is a project that will affect how Google crawls, indexes and ranks websites.

Google actually launched a site at this URL. On this site, you could perform searches and get a glimpse into the world of the search results from the Caffeine algorithm. As we investigated the ranking results in Caffeine, we noticed the top 10 rankings were undergoing daily fluctuations, for brand and non-brand search terms and phrases. Overall it was very unpredictable. There were times when the rankings for one keyword would change throughout the day. One thing we could all agree on: Google was presenting results more quickly. Google must have decided that users wanted results more quickly.

Google updated the Caffeine algorithm every day. With the rise of real-time search (i.e. Twitter and Facebook updates), as well as the continued explosion of image search and video search, we were expecting to see a lot of new results in the top 10 rankings for any given keyword or phrase. In fact, many SEOs are guessing that this new algorithm will affect the core nature of how URLs are ranked via links and PageRank. Caffeine was also a way for Google to test the placement of news, images, videos, shopping results, etc… in a new layout for universal search results. You can see a lot of that today already. There’s more images, videos and news items in the top 10 results. It appears that Caffeine will bring about even more changes in the layout for universal search.

Today, Google took down the Caffeine sandbox::

We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox.
Based on the success we’ve seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.

Matt Cutts, Google’s chief spam cop and all-around spokesperson for all things search, followed up on his blog with this:

I know that webmasters can get anxious around this time of year, so I wanted to reassure site owners that the full Caffeine roll out will happen after the holidays. Caffeine will go live at one data center so that we can continue to collect data and improve the technology, but I don’t expect Caffeine to go live at additional data centers until after the holidays are over. Most searchers wouldn’t immediately notice any changes with Caffeine, but going slowly not only gives us time to collect feedback and improve, but will also minimize the stress on webmasters during the holidays.

One thing to note is that the algorithm change will not be launched until after the holidays. We believe the new algorithm will have an impact for our clients, but it is virtually impossible to know what those changes might be, especially now that they have taken down the Caffeine sandbox. They will have 2-3 more months to update Caffeine even further before it launches, so it would be pure conjecture to predict the ways it may or may not affect the rankings for our clients. However, we do believe that Google will still continue to lead the search engine world in rewarding solid SEO strategies while providing the most relevant results.

In the end, the search results page layouts and keyword rankings will change. But that should be no surprise. Google launches major algorithm updates 2-3 times per year, and they do not typically publicize it. That is precisely why SEOs are taking note of Caffeine. In my opinion, Caffeine is a call-to-action for all search marketers to expand SEO campaigns to encompass images, videos, press releases, news, shopping, books, related searches, social accounts, etc… Google has shown us that they are presenting more and more of those items in the top results. The need for a solid, aggressive SEO strategy is indisputable, simply because the competition for homepage real estate has increased with the introduction of the universal search elements mentioned above.

SEO can no longer remain in the background of your search marketing campaigns. SEO cannot be paused. SEO cannot be offset by bigger PPC budgets. In the long run, you can’t afford to ignore social media, mobile search, image search optimization and asset management. Heaven forbid, you may even need to get a Twitter account. You must embrace all aspects of SEO. Or you will be defeated in the SERPs.

Google has thrown down the gauntlet. When Caffeine goes live, your rankings may not fluctuate very much in the short term. I mean, c’mon. You’ve got a huge brand name, and your website has tons of inbound links. You are a PR6! Well, don’t get too comfortable. You may not be able to simply rest on title tags, meta tags, inbound links and PageRank. With the increased competition, it is getting tougher to rank in the top 10. And the big question is: What are you going to do about it?