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What’s up at Google Inc?  Are they going to change everything about indexing?  Well, as you have become accustomed to, Google never tells you everything.  You can’t be sure if they are telling you anything until they do it.

On August 10th, 2009, Google told the world (quietly) about a project called “Caffeine.”  Caffeine is the name they gave their effort to re-write the search architecture at Google.  Mat Cutts, the Google Engineer talked with WebProNews about it on August 11th – Go here for the Google Caffeine video.

So what is it?  It is a re-write of how to index, to put in other terms.  Matt Cutts described it a “a fundamentally big change” up there with the changes that occurred in 2005 (they called that the “Big Daddy” update).  You can see this interview below…

They claim that most people won’t notice anything, but no guarantees… however Cutts claims it will allow indexing to occur faster, as well as be more flexible and powerful (hmmm, what is powerful???).

Officially, Google wasn’t going to change anything, except in it one test data center, until after the 2009 winter holidays.  Well, it’s after the holidays, and where do we stand?

There are some know-it-alls that claim they have seen it in action on the net.  Others, claim they are nuts.  January 2010 was the month mentioned for the Caffeine to be let loose, but no one is sure if it’s happened.  What’s the one big element of change that Google is looking at…

I’ve mentioned it before (5 Tips for SEO Change), did you pay attention… speed!  Your sites speed of loading and operation.  If you want to obsess on something to “fix” in your website to get it up in the rankings faster, then speed would be it.

Of course, this assumes you have put up good content, and have a good site architecture to boot.  If not, don’t waste your time with speed.  It won’t make one been of difference for your junk site full of spam, rss feeds, or other copied material.

(I’ve had problems with the video above when using Firefox – works fine in IE)

Recently, Matt Cutts posted another video on his blog about “The State of the Index” (probably much more important the last US State of the Union).  So here is the video so you don’t have to go looking for it…

If you would like to try Caffeine, you can check it out at: http://www2.sandbox.google.com. (This link seems to be up and down – don’t know why).

I hope this hasn’t overloaded you with SEO stuff, but SEO month is over, and it needed a big ending.

- Wayne Sharer

Reference sites:

Google Webmaster Central Channel

Chris Crum: Has Google Begun Changing How it Indexes?