'Caffeine' is Google's new search update which sees the index of its known web pages become quicker to update and also higher in capacity.
They weren't content with it taking perhaps a couple of weeks to visit and update a new website, no, they wanted it NOW.
But before we go into what this means for you and your website, let's take a brief tour of the history of how things used to be...
Way back in the annals of Internet history, say, seven years ago, if you wanted to get your website included on Google's search results then it was simply a matter of stuffing a load of keywords in your 'meta tags' and submitting it to their index.
Easy peasy, but the results were varied.
For a start-off, the keywords in the meta tag didn't have to bear any resemblance to the rest of the page.
This meant you could get your pages found for totally irrelevant searches such as 'Britney Spears' even though your site was about plumbing.
OK, it wasn't quite that easy, but Google certainly wasn't the sophisticated text cruncher it is today, and mistakes were made.
Also, they used to have what was known as the 'Google dance' where your search ranking was updated every few months or so.
This meant you might wait three months before you could be found and then another three months before there was a significant increase in your rankings.
Very frustrating stuff.
As Google evolved it began to use a 'tiered' system that meant new pages could be found within weeks, put into a queue and then dealt with on a priority basis.
This meant we weren't waiting for the 'dance' to occur and we could get rankings quite quickly.
Very good news for everyone.
But there was a limit to this and as the Internet just gets fuller and fuller the time to get indexed could get longer and longer, especially for some really tough keywords.
Caffeine changes all this.
It is a constant update and when a new page is found it is processed immediately meaning search results can be changed daily.
Got a new site? Got enough links to it? Blam - you can get found.
Not only that, they've updated the underlying database meaning they can handle terabytes of data.
It's tempted to say 'unlimited' amounts, but I bet they'll find a limit one day.
So, as far as many of us can see, caffeine is a good thing and means news, blogs and other more instant items of important or interesting information will now be available faster and there will be more of it.
Bad news if you want a quiet life, but if that's you - turn off the PC...
They weren't content with it taking perhaps a couple of weeks to visit and update a new website, no, they wanted it NOW.
But before we go into what this means for you and your website, let's take a brief tour of the history of how things used to be...
Way back in the annals of Internet history, say, seven years ago, if you wanted to get your website included on Google's search results then it was simply a matter of stuffing a load of keywords in your 'meta tags' and submitting it to their index.
Easy peasy, but the results were varied.
For a start-off, the keywords in the meta tag didn't have to bear any resemblance to the rest of the page.
This meant you could get your pages found for totally irrelevant searches such as 'Britney Spears' even though your site was about plumbing.
OK, it wasn't quite that easy, but Google certainly wasn't the sophisticated text cruncher it is today, and mistakes were made.
Also, they used to have what was known as the 'Google dance' where your search ranking was updated every few months or so.
This meant you might wait three months before you could be found and then another three months before there was a significant increase in your rankings.
Very frustrating stuff.
As Google evolved it began to use a 'tiered' system that meant new pages could be found within weeks, put into a queue and then dealt with on a priority basis.
This meant we weren't waiting for the 'dance' to occur and we could get rankings quite quickly.
Very good news for everyone.
But there was a limit to this and as the Internet just gets fuller and fuller the time to get indexed could get longer and longer, especially for some really tough keywords.
Caffeine changes all this.
It is a constant update and when a new page is found it is processed immediately meaning search results can be changed daily.
Got a new site? Got enough links to it? Blam - you can get found.
Not only that, they've updated the underlying database meaning they can handle terabytes of data.
It's tempted to say 'unlimited' amounts, but I bet they'll find a limit one day.
So, as far as many of us can see, caffeine is a good thing and means news, blogs and other more instant items of important or interesting information will now be available faster and there will be more of it.
Bad news if you want a quiet life, but if that's you - turn off the PC...
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