Website Design Tips

New Google search update, Caffeine

As we all know, Google is forever tweaking their search algorithm to help improve user experience and create a cleaner infrastructure. Those who had bad experiences with Big Daddy a few years back, may be biting their nails to hear that Google is at it again, this time with an algorithm change they are referring to as the Caffeine update.

How to check out Google's Caffeine Update?

You can check out how your website is going to fare with Googles new search algorithm on the sandbox (testing / beta) version found at: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

First find out from your website statistical program what keywords people are currently typing into Google Search to find your site. Then head across to the sandbox version of Caffeine and type the same keyword into the search box. ie Compare the current version with the new Caffeine search and examine the differences in where your website is listed.

Example search test

After doing a few test searches for keywords leading to Hypergurl, we found for the most part, results were fairly similar.

For example, the keywords, 'html scripts', results in 3rd and 4th position for both search versions.

While some keywords were listed higher up, for others 1 or 2 down. So it's safe to presume it will even out overall?

With some more experimenting, we've also found Hypergurl listed on the index page of the search for keywords not currently listed. No doubt this will see web developers and the search engine optimization world diving in to figure out the changes. We’ll likely see many a speculative blog post about how best to optimize for the new infrastructure.

Our advice

Keep building websites with unique content. As long as your work is all your own, you'll be fine.

Refer back to Google Webmaster Guidelines regularly.

Now the only question that remains is, when are they going to flick the switch?