Posted by Nathan Smith August 12th, 2009
On Monday Google announced that a new architecture for its search technology is approaching completion, and invited web users to take a first look at the shape of Google to come.
Actually it would be more accurate to call Caffeine an update, rather than a fix, and it appears that it’s an important one, at least from Google’s point of view.
Announced on Monday, and currently still in development, it hasn’t gone live yet, but the eventual aim is no less than to update Google’s web search architecture, to allow it to "push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions".
In short, it appears that this is a first glimpse at Google’s next generation of search technology.
Unlike the release of MS’s Bing, which included a lot of changes to the UI (User Interface), Caffeine is all about how Google operates "under the hood", and Google anticipates that the majority of users may not even notice the shift. However, the project has now reached a point where the search giant is willing to let the public have a look at its next big thing, and is inviting feedback from users, with regards to any changes they notice between results served by the old architecture and those which Caffeine provides.
Despite this preview it’s clear that Caffeine is still a work in progress. Indeed, Google engineer Matt Cutts has stated that to date not all of it’s features have been enabled, and that mobile and international versions aren’t available yet either.
Given that it’s hard to gauge what impact Caffeine will ultimately have on the results which Google users see, or how it will affect those who work within SEO. There have been suggestions that it may be moving universal search results further down the front page, which, from an SEO’s point of view, could only be a good thing. However, at this early stage, it’s hard to see how anyone could have carried out rigorous enough examinations, of the way Caffeine operates, to be certain that any apparent changes aren’t "false positives" resulting from the use of too small a data set. Even where genuine changes are noticed it’s entirely possible they will change yet again, or disappear, as Google continues to develop the aspects which we can currently see, and enables new features.
One thing’s for certain, SEOs will be watching closely as Caffeine develops, and will be putting a great deal of effort into figuring out what adaptations, if any, are required in our strategies and techniques.
Tags: caffeine, Google
comments Share
