Google’s next gen search engine Caffeine became availabe in Aug 2009

Andrew Bates

Client Services Manager

In Aug ’09 Google unveiled its next generation search engine called Caffeine.  Likely in direct response to Microsoft’s Bing search platform, Google Caffeine is focused on faster, more relevant search that takes into account social and viral media sites.  With improved “temporal relevance,” Caffeine is said to have better results than the old Google when returning breaking information.

SEO and social media thought leaders have been putting the new Google through its paces at the publicly available Google Caffeine test sandbox.  For comparison, initial tests focus on: Speed, Accuracy, Temporal Relevance, and Index Size. 

What are the differences between Google Caffeine, old school Google, and competitors like Bing? 

Well the speed is definitely noticable.  Search comparisons show that Caffeine is easily two times faster than the old Google. 

Old Google search for “Dog” yields results in .25 seconds:

Google Caffeine search for “Dog” yields results in .12 seconds:

What about the accuracy?  Although all blended search options do not seem to be live in the new Google, there does seem to be an increase focus on keywords.  Time will tell, but so far Google Caffeine is incredibly accurate.

How is Caffeine on Temporal Relevance and finding breaking news?  The jury is still out.  Google Caffeine frequently returns the exact same results as the previous Google or Bing.

Where is the most noticeable improvement next to the speed?  The new Google Caffeine index appears to be many times larger than that of the original Google, but Bing still seems to return the greatest number of indexed results on a consistent basis.

Mashable’s SEO expert Ben Parr gives a great overview in his recent post “Google Caffeine: A Detailed Test of the New Google” with some excellent examples of searches he performed in all 3 environments.

 So how will Google’s Caffeine search platform influence SEO and social media? 

First Google Caffeine impressions:

-       It is fast, with a deeper index

-       There is an increased focus or weight on keywords

-       There may be an increased weighting on domain authority & some authoritative tag type pages ranking (like Technorati tag pages + Facebook tag pages) with potentially slightly more weight on exact match domain names

-       Caffeine likely has an improved comprehension of related words and synonyms

-       Google’s new search may have increased the relevance associated with video and image results while decreasing the volume of multi-media returnWhat do you think?  Try Google Caffeine against your favorite search site at Google Caffeine test sandbox and let me know what results you see.

- @AndrewBates