Google Caffeine About To Roll Out

Last August, Google announced the coming of Google Caffeine, which is an upgraded version of its search engine that they will roll by the end of the year. Google’s implementation of this new search tool represents a new infrastructure that is all going on “under the hood”, and the casual user won’t find anything new aside from subtle changes in the interface.

Google has made it clear that their search business is about bringing more value to the user experience (related article here). And with the impending competition following the merger of Bing and Yahoo!, it is nice to hear that Google is not standing idly with their flagship product.

So what does this mean for users? If you are a Google power user, you will find that the new Google will be speedier, more accurate, and get more search results, which is basically all the things that Google is already good at. Will it change the way people use Google? Probably not, but it is interesting to see how the new Caffeine will keep us away from others search engines.

What does this mean for SEO? Now that is a more interesting question. So far all we have are educated guesses since it has yet to go live and it usually takes years after launch to figure out the nuances of these kinds of developments.

Although Google claims that most of the changes will happen under the hood and any changes in search results are minor, these small modifications will be game changers especially in niches with highly competitive keywords. In SEM, a minute change could spell the difference of being in the first page or third page in SERPs. Even a small downgrade in rankings can mean less search engine traffic.

CompareCaffeine.com offers side by side comparisons of new the new Google and the old Google. There is also a blind search service that compares Google caffeine with Yahoo! and Bing search results.

Google has finished testing Caffeine and they will slowly make the new search public starting with one datacentre.