Google: What Is Google Caffeine?

Google has a new search engine, and the name they’ve given this pioneer of the next generation is ‘Google Caffeine’. This engine will be what is now used for indexing all the pages on the Internet. This new addition is much more than just an update, it’s a complete overhaul. That means a new algorithm, a complex formula with the calculations Google will use to do all its web page rankings, which means ‘yours’ too.

In recent times, Google has become much more sensitive to the webmasters, and has been a lot more forthcoming with how it indexes its pages. When they started this one, they gave the webmasters access to a pre-version of Caffeine.. This enabled the webmasters to view the mechanics of the program, and gauge how well their keywords and sites were going to fare with this new index. The beta site has since been taken down.

But there are certain factors in regards to ranking that Google is letting us know about. And mainly it is the ‘Site Speed’ or how fast your site loads that will play a big part in how it gets ranked. We’ve also heard quite a bit about having broken links on your site, and if you have them now you’ll find your site ranking lower. And you never want to link up with ‘bad neighborhoods’ if you want to rank high with Google.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise or a shock the ‘overall page quality’ is going to play a greater role as well. You have to look at it this way – Google is putting out a product just like other companies, and it has to maintain a high standard of quality. If not, then that reflects back on all concerned with Google and their SERPs. And this is one of the main keys to all their revenue. So they absolutely have to do everything within their power to keep their product fast, current, relevant, and above all, a thing of quality.

So you can expect ‘on-page’ factors to have a much greater role in this new engine known as Google Caffeine. Things like page design, unique quality content, easy navigation, meta tags, titles, keyword density, description, page views, alt tags, traffic numbers, and bounce rate will all be playing a larger role in getting ranked. Anytime you have a page that is perfectly optimized with keywords, with the keywords in the title, the description, meta tags, and the alt tags on your page, then you’ll rank higher with Caffeine, and any other engine as well.

This doesn’t place Google’s index in question at all. They understand how things work online, and they don’t want an unfair advantage to go to those with deep pockets who may try to buy their way into the top spots. We know that in spite of Google’s attempt to stop it, there’s going to be link buying and keyword positioning going on, but it does shine a good light on Google for doing what they can to stop it. Right or wrong there are just times when money and unlimited resources nets you benefits that others less fortunate just can’t swing.

When you look at it from all sides, you see that this is how it’s been, with Google on one side, and the multinational competitors on the other, with the average small web master or online marketer stuck in between. But no more – now there’s Google Caffeine !

So what new rules will Google Caffeine bring into the mix? The main question is in regards to the importance of back linking. Is it being played down in favor of keyword-based domains and the on-site content and optimization? Has there been a shift to quality content from the back link numbers of yesterday? The original intention of Sergey Brin and Larry Page who started Google in 1998 was to keep things even and fair. But if links can be bought, how do you achieve this goal?

What we may experience is the growth of the importance of social links and bookmarks in Google Caffeine. It’s easy to buy 1,000 links, but to get 1000 ´diggs´ involves a lot more difficulty. It could be that this is the way Google brings back some fairness to their evaluations, and how they keep the playing field more level.

But there will be nothing in Google Caffeine that will be all that black and white. There are still plenty of other factors to be looked at. Like the age of the site, it’s past history, it’s reputation, authority branding, and the traffic numbers. All of these have their part in the determination of just where you rank.

One of the underlying facts of this whole issue is that many of the experienced webmasters already know that Google’s SERP is not a one-trick pony any more. When it comes to very lucrative keyword phrases, Google’s results get broken down into five different categories. There are Video listings, Info listings, Shopping listings, News listings, and Corporate listings. When you think about Caffeine, you can see it’s probably one of the best moves Google has made in the past few years in terms of making the SERPs more fair and putting everyone on a more level playing field.

Another puzzling aspect of Google Caffeine is the emphasis it will place on the ranking power of ‘keyword-based domains’. This kind of a domain is one that has your keyword within the name. Will these get ranked higher? We’ve been hearing it for years from webmasters about how you should choose domain names that reflect the search terms you expect your visitors to use . And when you think about it, it’s just good common sense. Anyone who is searching for something like ‘running shoes’, for example, would be more likely to find them at a domain called ‘running-shoes(dot)com’. And it terms of SEO, your back links will have the searched keyword in the URL, and this will bring you up in the rankings.

The thing that all of us need to remember, to bring everything into context, is that the web is constantly evolving. It changes with a speed like nothing else in our history. Everyday there are new sites like Facebook or Twitter emerging onto the scene, and everyone scampers around to keep up. The web users are also growing in their knowledge of the internet and they’re becoming very savvy in their use of the web.

Could it be possible that one day even search engines will have to take a back seat to how we find things on the web? Who knows?

As the web evolves, keyword-based domains are becoming more valuable. This value will reflect in the quality of the site. A person who makes thousands of dollars from their keyword-based domain can afford to invest in getting good quality design and content. What will probably happen is that as these domains become more and more valuable, big companies and marketers will grab them up and find ways to exploit them. Thousands of these keyword-based domains will probably get bought up by huge corporations with plenty of cash, who realize just what value these sites hold.

The winds of change have brought new challenges to search engine optimization. The main thing you want to focus on now is the fluctuation of your rankings. You don’t want to be caught off-guard by the new Google programming. By watching your site’s standing in the search results, you’ll get a feel for how to adjust the way you get it ready. You can tweak your SEO work so that your ranking stays as high as you can get it.

If you’re an individual with only one site to check, then you can check it manually by using keywords in a single search engine. But if you happen to be a person running more than one site, and getting them all SEO ready, then you’ll have to check all your positions for a lot of keywords in dozens of search engines. This can add up to quite a bit of work.

Does it sound like too much to handle? Well, don’t let it discourage you. What you need is a rank checker. This is a powerful solution to your SEO standings. It will collect the data about your site’s page rankings for particular keywords in one mouse-click. This way you can monitor your SEO progress and make the necessary adjustments.

There’s a lot of rank checkers available, but only a few of them can have a big impact on your website optimization. The large majority, around 95% of them, are simply not worth the money. This is due to the fact that they can’t do the main rank checker task of checking ranks. They steadily return data that is useless in the optimization process. Plus Google doesn’t like them because they load too much pressure onto the search engine by sending too many queries too often. My favorite by the way… Scroogle.org pretty solid tool.

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