Google Caffeine – Will it Affect Traffic to Your Website?
August 24, 2009 by
Adam
Filed under
Website Traffic, Websites
One only has to mention the possibility of an algorithmic change of some kind and many online marketers run screaming for cover. Avid Internet marketers know only too well what may happen when the great guru Google decides to change its tactics and move the proverbial goalposts to one side. Websites that may have ranked highly prior to that may suddenly move down the list, to the next page or even disappear altogether.
Google, like the other search engines, employs a complex and proprietary system of ranking every single website in the known universe according to its relevance and authority. Volumes have been written to try and break down the reasoning that goes into Google’s methodology and to try to decipher the algorithms used. To this day, no one outside of corporate HQ is 100% certain how the system works but we have a fairly good idea about the fundamentals.
It is no secret that Google wants to ensure that, when it is asked to look for information about a certain keyword through its search engine query box, it returns the most relevant information and a list of the most appropriate websites. Don’t forget, that as Google makes so much money out of its Adwords initiative, it is in their best interests to select the most relevant information to ensure that they earn the most money from those ubiquitous pay-per-click ads.
When Google said recently that they were rolling out what they called “under the hood” revisions to their search technology, many people stood up and took notice. Code-named “Caffeine,” Google simply refers to it as next-generation. “It’s the first step in the process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions…. most users won’t notice a difference in search results.”
It is too early to say whether the proposed changes will have any significant effect on positioning or whether, as some fear, wholesale changes to the science of search engine optimization or content creation may be necessary once again. Early results appear to show a change in the way that different media are represented within a typical search results page. For example, video and news story items may now appear towards the center of the page instead of towards the top.
As Google has become very adept at what they do, it seems unlikely that there are any wholesale changes to come and that “Caffeine” may not make you feel jittery after all.
Is Caffeine an answer to Bing? How strong do you like your search engines?
Adam Toren
Google makes revisions to their code on a regular basis, but it isn’t too often that one of those revisions is large enough to get a catchy name along with it such as caffeine. It will be interesting to see what changes the updates bring to the current well known list of SEO optimization strategies.
Every change Google makes to their algorithms affects the results obtained for searches. I absolutely hate the personalized additions that Google thinks I want to view. When I search, I want the overall best results not some filtered, watered down “moderated” rubbish. If people knew how to search correctly then Google could take a vacation and reduce their staffing costs.
Google is scaring away search engine optimizers in order to make money through it’s PPC program. The more it will disturb it’s listing, more and more people will conclude that, paying to SEO is not a good idea and let’s get back to adward.
Well I suppose change is inevitable. Especially as fast as things change online. I am still trying to learn everything I can about how SEO works now. If they come out with a big revamp and a whole new set of things that need to be done to optimize, I think my head may just explode
I am not sure that we will see that many changes as far as what is going on behind the scenes to rank, but we may see changes in the way they appear like you suggest. Like adding images/videos results when relevant, like they are already doing. I have also seen results for example when you type “Jeff Gordon” you see his starts being displayed on the Google page.
Till then,
Jean
Google are always changing certain aspects of how they rank sites for relevance and value.
There is one main truth that I’m sure will always be ’standard’ with google - they always seek out and look favourably on any content that provides genuine value to google users.
So what I do with my posts, is simply write informative posts with valuable content whereever I can. My blog has only been up for about 2 months, but in that time my Alexa Ranking has dropped from just over 2 million to around 450k.
Andrew.