Google Caffeine - Speed is King

Well it's official, after months of speculation in the SEO and Internet Marketing world Google Caffeine is now finally here. Unlike the May Day algorithm change Caffeine represents more of a technical indexing adjustment to improve the speed and efficiency with which pages are indexed and served. It a system change at the Google end of the search relationship largely in respect of how data is collected, not what data is collected. As Vanessa Fox at Search Engine Land say: "Caffeine itself is not a ranking algorithm change. It’s an indexing infrastructure change." She does concede however that: "That doesn’t mean that it won’t impact rankings."

Perhaps the two main questions raised through the introduction of Caffeine are:

a. What exactly is Caffeine?

b. How can you use the Caffeine update to your advantage?

What is Caffeine?

The internet is far bigger than anyone, even Google, could have predicted. The sheer volume of information and the rate at which new information is now added online is deafening. With the rapid addition of video, images, news, blogs and other forms of quick-fire content the internet is quickly becoming a vast repository of data. All data that needs to be indexed.

In the early days Google would update its index approximately every 4 months. From 2000 this reduced to a 1 month re-indexing.

In 2003 Google switched to an incremental indexing system crawling approximately 10% of the web nightly, indexing it and then and pushing that segment live. Caffeine is the first major change to Google's indexing since then.

Caffeine now analyses small portions of the web on a continuous basis sending it live as soon as it is indexed rather than in batches. A rolling, real-time indexing serving fresh, timely search returns. Matt Cutts draws an analogy where he describes the pre-Caffeine system as the bus that collects you at the airport. The new Caffeine update represents a shiny new limo ready and waiting to which you away to fresh search results. Nice.

According to Google Caffeine provides 50 percent fresher results for web searches than their previous index, so whether it's a news story, a blog or a forum post, you can now link to fresh, relevant content much quicker than has ever been possible.

Caffeine also massively increases Google's ability to scale up the size of its index. as well as adding more information parameters such as anchor text, meta data, keywords, regional, link information or other signals to help define a page's relevance.

How can you use Caffeine to your advantage?

Google is in a hurry and Caffeine is all about speed. The internet is growing exponentially and to cut through the noise you need to move quickly. Align your offering with Google's ambitions and you will benefit.

Don't waste Google's time with duplicate content. Make it easy by offering your unique content and URLS on a plate through HTML site maps, XML site maps, RSS feeds, Google product feeds. Note the increasing importance of video in modern SEO. Feed the Cafferine index a Video Sitemap with information about your video content. Be sure to flag up video content on your site Google might not otherwise discover. The same applies to Apps. Caffeine makes them visible. A mobile Google Apps search on an Android or iPhone and will quickly and easily return Apps.

The frequency of updating new content is also important. Use social media to keep your content fresh and your site in Google's eye-line. Do yourself a favour too and ensure that your content is original, considered and adds value to the user experience.

Site and hosting speed will also start to factor more as Google looks to scythe through the internet to quickly reach relevant search returns. If you aren't delivering well engineered sites using robust, speedy architecture then expect to lag behind the competition.

Talk to your SEO for more information on how you can turn the Caffeine update to your competitive advantage.

Call Top Page NOW on +44 (0)845 052 9467 and talk to Chris Horner

Posted by Chris Horner SEO
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Improve your SERPs following the MayDay release

SEOs and business owners around the world are studying the fall out of what's been labelled the Google May Day update. So far, so unhappy, with many web masters and SEO professionals reporting falls in traffic, especially long tail traffic, sometimes by as much as 50%. Clearly when visitor numbers drop in these sorts of volumes the implications when it come to sales and profits can be significant.

So what's going on? What is the May Day Google algorithm change? Why are websites suffering and more importantly what can they do to fix things?

Now while there's nothing new about Google tweaking their algorithm, in 2009 Google made non less than 350 to 400 changes, says Google SEO guru Matt Cutts, this one seems to have taken people by surprise. Happening at and about the same time as the Google search interface changes people have been struggling to to explain
both the reasoning and implications of the changes. The good and the great including Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz, Frank Reed at Marketing Pilgrim and Vanessa Fox at SearchEngineLand have all commented on the changes and shared analysis.

Could it be an indexing change designed to support the speed of Caffeine? Could it be a link valuation shift where even good sites are being punished from bad links? Has there been an increased bias given to authority/brand sites. Tedster at Webmaster World suggested a phrase match shift where Google has introduced new technology that regards particular types of long tail as less relevant.

Google themselves haven't been too forthcoming about the specifics of the change though Vanessa Fox quotes Matt Cutts as saying: ”this is an algorithmic change in Google, looking for higher quality sites to surface for long tail queries. It went through vigorous testing and isn’t going to be rolled back.”

Google went on to confirm that May Day constituted a rankings change, not a crawling or indexing change, so even though pages are still being crawled they are now considered as less relevant..As Fox noted: "Based on Matt’s comment, this change impacts "long tail" traffic, which generally is from longer queries that few people search for individually, but in aggregate can provide a large percentage of traffic."

Matt Cutts interviewed by Rand Fishkin SEOmoz June 9th 2010


So what can you do if your site – say a large e-commerce site is failing to claim the rankings, and more importantly the traffic that it used to? First things first make sure you check out the pages that are ranking above you. What factors can you identify that might help them? Anchor text, rich content, strong internal linking, strong external linking? Google's definition of long tail relevance has changed and you need to find out specifically what they are looking for. Remember too that Google craves compelling content. It's rich, high quality content content that will always be rewarded with links and high ranking – not fusty old corporate catalogue.

It's worth also asking yourself whether it's such a wise move putting all your long tail traffic eggs in the one Google basket. If a relatively minor change like this can wipe out such a large proportion of your traffic then isn't that a rather fragile strategy upon which to build your online marketing?

Hopefully this will teach some of the newer web marketers that Google is only one of MANY ways to get traffic, and focusing even closer on a single algorithm is only asking for trouble.
A strong SEO plan must encompass a range of marketing; strong social presence including Twitter and Facebook and especially blogs. You need to engage your audience too with great content and as well as getting out there and building links. Create that virtuous circle.
With an SEO strategy covering multiple 'touch points you’ll never lose 50% of your traffic just because one aspect of your marketing fails you..
For many organisation the algorithm changes may in fact present opportunities. As Frank Reed at Marketing Pilgrim says: "The long tail has always been a target of any good SEO campaign especially by the smaller players. Now there’s a chance to make even further inroads against the big boys. Study up!"