Google’s Caffeine Update – SEO Implications

If you’re paying attention, by now you may have heard that Google is launching a major update to their indexing code, codenamed “Caffeine”. This update has been branded as a re-coding of much of the software that they have been running in the past, in order to make Google search more efficient, scalable, and ideal for searchers. However there are going to be some changes to rankings as well, since the algorithm is seeing a major overhaul.

Specifically this is an update to the Google indexing engine, and has been compared in scale to the 2004-2005 “Big Daddy” update, which majorly changed the face of the Google engine and made it a much more powerful search site.

Since this is a fairly major update to the indexing code, Google not only announced the update, but also created a ’sandbox’ testing page where SEO’s and other power users can go and test out the new code. It’s currently down for maintenance, but you can find that testing page here.

After taking a look at the new code, there are some minor but significant changes, mostly visible with universal search. Less images are being triggered than before, and Google News updates don’t seem to be appearing with every single search, as they are currently. Another interesting tidbit is that the “More from this site” plusboxes seem to be appearing far more often than before. This may make tighter theming of sites more profitable than in the past. There are bound to be deeper changes than this, however – and I certainly am excited to delve deeper into the new and updated Google engine once the sandbox comes back online.

Matt Cutts broke the story on his blog, and you can see him discussing the issue below in an interview at SES San Jose:

Tracking Hurricane Olga and other weather systems through the Caribbean.

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