Earlier this month, the latest version of Google’s search engine went live. We previously covered the new Caffeine search engine in an earlier blog post, but we felt that new developments meant we should post an update. Now that there’s a little more info out about Caffeine, we can start to look into how the latest and most advanced search engine yet from Google will affect search engine optimization and placement.
But first, lets go over the Caffeine basics. The official roll out date for Caffeine is scheduled for some time in early 2010. While Google has applied several updates to its search engine algorithm over the years, all evidence suggests that Caffeine is the largest overhaul of the Google engine in the company’s history.
And that means Website owners and marketers could see dramatically different results for their search engine optimization and placement efforts. Google has offered Website owners and marketers the chance to test their Websites against Caffeine’s new sorting and ranking algorithm since last summer, so the new engine isn’t exactly going to come as a total surprise to search engine optimization and ranking specialists. And while its great that Google has let Webmasters and marketers do some preliminary research on Caffeine, it would be a mistake to draw any hard conclusions. It’s very likely that Google will continue to tweak and refine Caffeine even after its given a full release.
So what can we glean from Caffeine? One major change is that Caffeine will take site speed into account when ranking Websites. That means Websites that load more quickly will be given prominence over slow and clunky ones. Google has also indicated that broken links are also going to be a potential penalty to search engine optimization and placement.
In short, Google will be placing more emphasis on what it’s calling “Overall Page Quality.” That suggests things like unique content, clean and crisp page design, good traffic numbers and the amount of time visitors spend on a page will all be key to search engine optimization and placement. A Webpage that’s optimized for targeted keywords within its title, description, meta tags and on the page should perform well with Google’s Caffeine.
