Google launched Caffeine in August 2009 to test the water, but by now, it has gone live worldwide. While many people see the name and think of coffee, there is a great deal of confusion over exactly what the fuss with Caffeine is all about.
Let’s be clear about Caffeine: it does not affect rankings, it does not improve your web speed, and it does nothing that you as a website owner will be affected by.
All Caffeine does is speed up how fast your content is made available to search users.
Google Web indexing: Pre- and Post-Caffeine
Before Caffeine, a webcrawler would pay a visit to your website and crawl the pages with the information returned to Google. Google would then process the information and archive it. This was a continuous process; however the information which was returned to Google Central would then be processed in batches, which meant that your site content may not be available to searchers until that batch was handled.
With the introduction of Caffeine, the information is processed while the webcrawler is in situ, which means that whenever your content is changed, it is going to be available that much faster for users searching for it.
Other Caffeine Features
Let’s be clear, Caffeine’s introduction doesn’t mean you will have more visits from Google’s webcrawlers, it simply means they’ll get your content available for searchers faster…about 50% faster. That said there are some features worth mentioning for the future:
- Google has increased storage capacity; and
- Google has introduced enhanced flexibility in how it stores and accesses ancillary webpage data.
There has been a substantial increase in Google’s storage capacity; however this is not going to have any immediate impact for either website owners or search engine users. In time this will change as the archive being accessed will expand as the pool of web-based information available to be searched increases itself, but for today, it has no relevance.
Of greater significance are the changes in how Google stores and provides access to ancillary data which is collected by webcrawlers. Again, for today there is little relevance however, how Google decides to use this ancillary information in future could have a potential impact on future rankings. Ancillary information includes data such as links to a webpage, the anchor text used and what the external pages being linked to are. Right now, none of this data is being used in rankings but there is no guarantee this will remain the case in the future. Treat this point as something to watch out for in the future.
Takeaway
Caffeine is Google’s new, improved indexing system. It has no impact on search engine rankings at all!
Caffeine increases the speed with which the web is archived and made available to search users, but it does not increase the frequency of how often your site will be visited by Google. One point to remember for the future is that Google is collecting and storing ancillary information on webpages, and it is conceivable that this information will be used in the future to determine rankings.
