SEO / SEM Blog by Search Circus

If you haven’t heard of the latest big story out of Google—news of its new, upgraded search engine—don’t worry. Google did such an excellent job of keeping this story under wraps that it caught most in the tech news industry off guard. Code named “Caffeine,” this new engine promises better speed accuracy and breadth of user searches. If you’re interested in the organic SEO potential of Caffeine, you can test drive the new version here, in Google’ sandbox.

Along with a lot of other organic SEO and Internet marketing blogs, we’ve been spending plenty of ink covering Microsoft’s new Bing search engine. Google’s Caffeine seems to be an attempt to counter that buzz surrounding Bing and the recent Microsoft/Yahoo deal. So how does Caffeine stack up for organic SEO? If you believe the BBC headline, Google’s new search engine “puts Bing in the shade.” OK, that headline’s a bit misleading, since they’re just quoting a U.K.-based organic SEO Internet marketer, but he makes a good point here:

“Trouble is, Bing presents itself as an alternative to something that users are still – for now – happy with,” (Martin McNulty of search marketing specialist Trafficbroker) added.

So what makes the new Google better than the Google we all know? Caffeine sports three major improvements that anyone involved in organic SEO should note:

1. Speed: Search results are now delivered faster than ever. Were you satisfied with Google’s previous speed limit? Most people likely were, so this isn’t the most important refinement. Still, Google’s new speediness is impressive. A search for my neighborhood, “Tremont in Cleveland, Ohio” in the old Google engine returned results in .41 seconds—not bad at all. But the same search in Caffeine returned results in .1 seconds. That’s four times faster. Right now, Bing doesn’t display how fast it generates results.
2. Accuracy: This may be the improvement that users will care about the most. But how can you measure accuracy? Search accuracy is a pretty subjective quality. I Googled “What is the future of search engines” in both the old Google and Caffeine. The first four results were the same, but Caffeine inserted a BBC roundtable chat in the fifth spot, where the older Google search listed an academic paper. I’m guessing that most people would be more interested in the BBC segment than on reading a paper, so we’ll assume that’s what Google means by “better accuracy.” Keep in mind that a lot of other features of the new search engine, like real time updates, haven’t been implemented yet. Which brings us to…
3. Breaking News: Right now, Caffeine doesn’t seem to be much better than the older Google engine at returning up-to-the minute news results. Although it looks like Caffeine seems to update news faster.
4. Index Size: Caffeine is not only faster, but it returns more results. A search for “mice” on Caffeine returns 54.5 million results, where the same search on the old Google engine brings up 49 million. A Bing search returns 23.7 million results.

So what does this all mean for users, Webmasters and organic SEO specialists? The first is that Caffeine is fast. This may not be such a big deal when searching from your computer, but it could mean far faster results when searching with a mobile or smartphone. Also, Caffeine relies on keywords a lot more. This means that organic SEO strategies could change drastically, as longer keyword strings are now more important than ever. Caffeine also signals that real time search is the next big thing. Google is not only competing with Bing this time around, but also with Twitter and Facebook.

Of course, that’s not nearly the end of researching the changes to organic SEO that Google’s new search engine will bring. Stay tuned to our blog. We’ll let you in on the latest developments in organic SEO as soon as we learn them.