Google Caffeine Seems To Have Started

[Vladimir]

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Hi All,
Shocked I'm first to post this topic as I am Mr PPC but I noticed today some uplift in traffic and sought an answer. I've jumped up all over the place in SERPS (though not quite enough I fear lots of page 2 and page 3 results). Anyway gone looking and some of the Google data centers are pulling up new results.... check out these IP's ...

Google
Google
Google
Google

Search on terms like "google caffiene" and noises are being made as I write this, well they said something was to happen after the holidays so not a big surprise. I hope some of you get some positives from this, it seems on brand + generic terms some of the big boys have been pushed back a bit in favour of affiliate sites in my area of business (finance/insurance) so happy keyword hunting..!!

Vlad

[Matt Seigneur]

I was going to post a new thread but found this one, just had an email from text-link-ads.com (not that i buy links!)

Google Caffeine: Coming Soon to a Search Result Page Near You
-Tom Rusling, Director of Search Strategy

By now most of you have heard at least some mentions of Google’s upcoming algorithm update. Nicknamed Caffeine, Google has been brewing this update for many months and expects to serve it up late this January. Google engineer and Quality Control Team leader Matt Cutts has described the Caffeine update as being the largest and most fundamental change to the Google system since its Big Daddy update of 2005.

Caffeine: Threat or Opportunity?

When algorithms change, rankings change. It’s as simple as that. But it’s not necessarily a bad thing: search engine optimization is a zero sum game…there are exactly ten results that will always show up in the top ten. So, one site’s loss is another site’s gain. What can you do to make sure you are on the beneficiary side of this update? First and foremost, you must understand the essential elements of Caffeine.

Caffeine Ingredients?

What is Caffeine? How will it affect search results? How does link building fit into the mix? What can you do to prepare for Caffeine? While we are not sitting in the Google kitchen, we have been shown a preview of what is cooking.
First and foremost, the name provides significant insight. Why Caffeine? The new update focuses on speed and sharper focus. Fewer search results served up faster. To do this, Google is completely rewriting their indexing system to crawl faster, index more efficiently, and serve up fewer results much more quickly. Content freshness will (finally) start to play the more important role it deserves; old outdated and stale content will be more readily expunged. Our explorations into Caffeine results here at Text Link Ads have shown a reduction in the result set of anywhere from 30-70%!

The Role of Links

Links are still the key differentiator to move the needle forward once you have some initial traction in the search engine results. Unlike some past algorithmic update shakeups, Caffeine is not targeted to changing the criteria of links and other off-page factors. Rather, the on-page factors of a site are the variables in play.
Successful SEO is still very much the same in the post-Caffeine world. Only more so. In order for links to be most effective, they must be directed towards pages on sites which are quick to load, efficient in their coding, architected to facilitate a flatter crawl structure, and featuring a high percentage of unique target relevant content. To this last point, be assured that if your site has volumes of pages that contain repurposed content or largely redundant templated content, Caffeine will definitely not be your friend.

Too Much Caffeine Got You Nervous?

Caffeine is fundamentally a big change for Google, and invariably you will see fluctuation (positive and negative) in your organic search rankings. This fluctuation will be driven by the extent to which your site is more or less compliant to the aforementioned factors vs. your competitor sites. Understanding why rankings for you and your competition change in the upcoming weeks is the key first step to ensure your reactions and responses are appropriate and effective.

Is everyone just waiting to see what happens?!

[scdlewis]

Shocked I'm first to post this topic...

Yes, I was also surprised that there aren't already more threads on this. I think it's going to be very significant for affiliate marketing, partly because many affiliates with small sites will find it much easier to speed-optimise their sites than the merchants they're promoting, whose sites would cost thousands to modify. Also, according to an article in the May 2010 issue of .net magazine, Caffeine is giving more significance to domains which exactly match the search term, which is going to create a lot of new opportunities. My main site (which has little content but is highly optimised for speed) recently gained three places on page 1 without any changes to the site in the last month or so.

Of course, we still need to watch out for further changes in the SERPs as the algorithm could be changed during the next few months.

[Mogga]

I did see an article about google wanting pages to be fast to load.

Whilst I agree that you don't need slow pages there are also a lot of information based non-commercial sites that aren't on paid hosting. Whilst they have some really valuable information and should rank higher up the ratings, will this then mean they are reduced down the list because they're not speed optimised or on fast hosting?

At the same time bigger sites will now need to spend more on site infrastructure to cope with demand. On a heavy news day the bbc has this version
BBC NEWS | News Front Page
Which originally had only text but now has pictures.
Do sites need to produce a text/low graphics version for busy times?

Or will the increased server balancing and hosting actually speed up global warming as everyone ups their site speed to keep up at google?

I still think that google misses out sometimes on the point of it all. Content - providing the answer to the question people ask should surely be the most important bit of a search engine?

[marisa]

Now my websites ranking goes down due to google caffeine. So I have to change hosting to speed up my websites. Does anyone get problem like me?

[Mogga]

I suspect that you can tweak your website to make it faster.

Site Speed, A ranking factor that's easily managed - Yoast

There's a lot you can do that can help before you change hosting.

And if changing hosting is what google wants us all to do then I'm surprised it's not got some google approved hosting tucked away somewhere.

[findlite]

Hi All, Shocked I'm first to post this topic

Im not..... Google is always tinkering at its algo just like every other search engine but at the end of the day:

Quality Content + Public Interest + Organic Buildup Of Links = Top 10

The winning formula is and always will be the winning formula until some massive breakthrough..... For those of us who were around when Alta Vista was king, saw the rise and fall of Yahoo, Jeeves go into hiding and then come out to play again, Freeserve become Wanadoo become Orange and MSN become live become Bing and not to mention the Florida update too...........

Well you get the picture! Caffeine is just another footnote in the history of the web, nothing more, nothing less and will be met by a "meh" by most experienced webmasters.

[Vladimir]

Im not..... Google is always tinkering at its algo just like every other search engine but at the end of the day:

Quality Content + Public Interest + Organic Buildup Of Links = Top 10

The winning formula is and always will be the winning formula until some massive breakthrough..... For those of us who were around when Alta Vista was king, saw the rise and fall of Yahoo, Jeeves go into hiding and then come out to play again, Freeserve become Wanadoo become Orange and MSN become live become Bing and not to mention the Florida update too...........

Well you get the picture! Caffeine is just another footnote in the history of the web, nothing more, nothing less and will be met by a "meh" by most experienced webmasters.

Findlite - Quality Content + Public Interest + Organic Buildup Of Links = Top 10 not always the case as SEO is not a science, I am sure you are not shocked but hey, some of us were so busy creaming off the likes of Northern Rock, Tesco, Alliance and Leicester etc back when all of the above happened that lots of transparent news now causes us to jump after all, we are now affluent enough and have time to notice.

Marisa - Mogga is right, work on your site, you have some massive image files that need serious compression..!!

In the months that have passed since this posting caffeine has flattened out but that said, the space is changed and some of my heavyweight opponents have not regained their crowns..... the only fun part of long term affiliate activity is how fluid it all really is..!!

chin chin,

Vlad

[scdlewis]

Hi all,

My advice is not to upgrade your hosting in order to compensate for Caffeine. Upgrade your server if you need to handle increased volumes of traffic. Google is interested in how long it takes for a client to download a page along with its associated images and scripts. If your server-side processing is slow, look at caching to avoid database hits and improving code efficiency.

We probably have no control over the bandwidth bottleneck between the data centre and the client (who may be on a 56k modem or, more realistically, a mobile device), but we can reduce the amount of stuff that needs to be sent and reduce the number of requests from the client's browser. Strip whitespace and remove inline styles and scripts, let the browser cache resources, compress resources on the server, combine resources by merging CSS and JavaScript files and consider using master sprite images.

Good luck!

Simon