7 Facts All SEOs Should Know About Google Caffeine

As you probably already know, Google announced not just an algorithmic update but an entire architecture re-write of its web search called “Google Caffeine” a few day’s back. The head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts actually made a comparison of the Caffeine update to the infamous “Big Daddy Update” back in 2005.

The big question at the moment is what does the Google Caffeine update mean to SEOs? Here are seven things every SEO expert should know about Caffeine:

1. Test Caffeine

Caffeine is available for all to test on http://www2.sandbox.google.com/. This is a preview interface and is still work-in-progress. So expect changes in the SERPs as well as some downtime when it is under-going updates. You would notice it is a whole lot faster than the current version of Google

2. Do not Panic

SEO’s tend get into a frenzy whenever Google announces updates of any sort – be it PageRank updates or algorithmic updates. The advantage of Caffeine is that you can test it as well as give Google feedback. Just scroll to the bottom of the search result page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click on that link, type your feedback in the text box and then include the word caffeine somewhere in the text box in your suggestion or observation.

3. Link building – focus on quality not quantity

I ran some tests on a couple of the sites I manage with higher proportions of either high or low profile backlinks. Sites with a higher proportion of low profile backlinks in comparison to sites with a higher proportion of medium and high profile backlinks, I found were not fairing too well on Caffeine but getting still decent page one rankings on the current Google search.

My advice to SEO’s kicking off new projects or managing existing SEO campaigns would be to focus on link quality rather than quantity. Ramp up your acquisition of high profile backlinks to stand a chance of getting decent rankings on Caffeine.

4. Test Caffeine based on location & language

Although http://www2.sandbox.google.com/ is Caffeine’s URL, using query parameters, you can view results based by language & your geographic location. The parameters are as follows:

hl = language
gl = country code

As an example:

Viewing UK results you would need the “gl=uk” parameter: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/search?gl=uk

Viewing French language results in Canada, you would need parameters;
“hl=fr” and “gl=ca”:
http://www2.sandbox.google.com/search?hl=fr&gl=ca

5. Fix all your site’s Crawlability Issues

Fundamentally, Caffeine is a re-write of Google’s indexing system. Improvements have been made on Google’s crawling, indexing speed and result relevancy. The fact that Google has improved each of these key indexing elements means it is ever so important for webmasters and SEOs alike to make their sites more crawable and easier to index. Ensure you check your crawl stats, crawl errors and XML sitemap stats on Google Webmaster tools. Also ensure your house is in order to get your site is fully indexed. This way you can focus on link popularity.

6. Speed – Your Page Load Times

There is no question that page load times are important for crawling and indexing. Ensure that your site has decent page load times to get the best of Caffeine and to maintain a high crawl rate. I have noticed a slight drop in the SERPs on Caffeine for some of my slower loading sites – this is speculative and might be down to some other factors but I have nevertheless noticed.

7. Real Time Search

With the current advances in the real time search arena i.e. Facebook’s acquisition of Friendfeed and Twitter search, there is no doubt that Google’s architecture overhaul via Caffeine is geared towards real time indexing and real time search. At the time of writing this post, Caffeine’s SERPs were not too different from Google’s, but I expect to see more news, blog and social media a.k.a. twitter results to feature upon its full release. If you have tested Caffeine, you would have noticed how fast it results are (at least for the time being).

On the whole, exciting times albeit challenging times lay ahead for SEOs. Social media is going to play a more important role in SEO campaigns and Google would rely more and more on quality links to determine relevancy. If you have been practising good SEO, then there is really no need to worry about Caffeine as you would have noticed when you checked your site out.

Photo credits: D’Arcy Norman via flickr