by SEO Consultant
R. Falconer
R. Falconer
Google engineer Matt Cutts has announced a next generation architecture for Google's web search, known as Caffeine.According to the post on Google Webmaster Central Caffeine is the first step in a process that will allow Google to push the boundaries on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.
The reason for the timing of the announcement is that Google is now looking for web developers and power users (the absence of the acronym SEO is interesting) to provide feedback on a sandbox version of the system.
Google has been encouraging developers to make pages faster for some time now and has made no secret of the fact that it knows users like quick pages. Recently Google released Page Speed, a Firefox plugin that helps identify ways for webmasters and developers to speed up pages.
The update will apparently mean some differences to the results shown on results pages. Google is looking for feedback on these changes.
On initial inspection, the results look quite similar but after taking a closer look at the results, it becomes obvious that many pages are ranking higher or lower than previously - in a search for "cheese" the top result has been dropped completely. The reasons for these changes are not immediately obvious.
Bigmouthmedia noticed the following:
- Anchor text on some SiteLinks is different, in some cases the Sitelinks change from vertical to horizontal
- The second result in double listings changes in some cases and in others, the second result swaps with the first
- Image results are not displayed when they are in the normal results
- There generally isn't much change to the top 3 positions but deeper down the rankings the shift is greater
- In a search for "mortgage", Google throws in the top three results for "mortgage calculator" in positions 4 to 6
- Where they have changed, Wikipedia results seem to have increased in position generally
