What on Google-Earth is Google Caffeine?

Pardon the joke, but we really couldn't help ourselves! In a nutshell Goggle Caffeine is the code name given to the Google Search overhau.

The actual changes that are being made to the beloved Google have not been disclosed (nor are they likely to be). What has been disclosed is merely a collection of adjectives. In a recent interview Matt Cutts (head of Google's Webspam team) says "Caffeine tries be a lot more powerful, a lot more flexible and a lot more robust in the way it indexes."

BUT is there more to it? Speculation that Caffeine is a direct response to the newly formed partnering of Bing and Yahoo has been flatly denied by Google and we at Dusza would agree.

It's a well documented fact that Google have been evolving their search algorithm since its dawn, taking very little notice of the major players around them. This is one of the reasons why Google have superseded any other Search technology because they do not mark their success by pitting themselves against others, but simply by innovation.

So why is Google Caffeine important?

We have interpreted the information released by Google as Caffeine being a massive overhaul of what goes on under the bonnet of Google Search. It is not about changing the search results but more about changing the framework of Google so that it can evolve in the future without huge rewrites or complications.

We liken the difference between the original Google Search and Caffeine, to our own website CMS framework. Before the dawn of the Dusza framework each and every website was freshly created code, we would find new (and better) ways of doing in essence a very similar thing. This was great apart from integrating the newly created technology that was in trial on one website wouldn't integrate to an older website. With the introduction of the framework, every new innovation in technology can be integrated with every single one of our websites - providing they are on the latest evolution of the framework. This gives us the flexibility to rapidly evolve technology which we can offer at a much lower cost to our clients because it significantly reduces the time involved in programming a project. Because of this framework we are now thoroughly consistent and flexible.

We believe Caffeine is similar in concept. Google Search technology and innovation has occurred with the appearance of:

• mobile search
• time line search including the Google wonder wheel
• adwords
• xml feeds including Google Product Search
• personal search settings
• localised search

The original Google Search interface was never designed to encompass this myriad of permutations. Caffeine is likely to be the platform which all these facets of Search can be customised, switched on or off, combined or easily extended.

Another area of difference between the old and new may come from Googles' experience or trial and error. Since the 1990s Google has learnt some valuable lessons from customer reactions.

Now extremely conscious of upsetting the searcher Google decided to trial Caffeine to gauge reaction. If we scale this concept up, the likelihood of Google Search architecture being Data Centre specific may become a reality.

By this we mean allowing certain searchers to use certain data centres for specific methods of search. Google have already proved that Caffeine has started in one data centre, when given the green light the new architecture can take over another data centre and another and we would speculate that this ability to switch over data centres has another use. Google can choose to switch searchers from one data centre to another, to target specific geographical locations to specific data centres.

Why would this be important? Well, does every culture search and retrieve information in the same way? We would expect someone in China searching for McDonalds in Washington to not necessarily be looking for a local restaurant but perhaps historical information about when the first McDonalds came to Washington.

Take this theory even further and understand that within the culture of the Chinese the search algorithm may need to be customised to display results that that culture would expect to find. In a Muslim country is there any point returning results upon a subject that would be considered offensive?

What about Google Caffeine Optimisation?

Well, there has been much discussion in the Dusza offices about what Caffeine will mean for natural / organic search results for our clients. We believe our clients need not fear being dropped from search results.

Google wants to provide relevant results to searchers. That's the goal. Google needs people to search using their search engine in order to create the $21 billion they received in 2008.

Therefore any innovation that helps Google refine its search algorithms to promote websites that are relevant will become ever increasingly implemented. So what makes a website worth being ranked, we can only speculate again, but it is likely to include the fundamentals of a great website from adhering to W3C compliance and Accessibility issues to page load speeds.

If you are concerned about the impact of Caffeine on your website and want to discuss it with Dusza please feel free to get in touch www.dusza.co.uk