Google Caffeine Update

Anyone who follows all the latest from Google will have heard of the new Caffeine update that is being rolled out over the next coming months. Google engineer, Matt Cutts confirmed in his blog that this update isn’t going to shake up our search results too much although we may notice some minor changes with Google’s algorithm. You can try the new update for yourself here: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

Instead we expect to see a vast improvement of speed, more search results per keyword and more importantly, Google will react in real-time capable of delivering breaking news within your search as and when they happen. Google had been expected to announce this for some time after both Twitter and Facebook announced they were launching real-time search engines.

After testing the new Google caffeine update it’s obvious that Google’s algorithm has been affected more than Google have made out.

Anyone who knows a thing or two about SEO will understand the importance of back links, you will also know that keywords within a back link can drastically affect which search terms will display your website. For a great example of this in action try a search for “Click here” and you will notice the first result is from Adobe (get.adobe.com/reader/). Notice that this page does not have the words click or here anywhere on that page and neither in the URL. Therefore the only factor influencing Adobe’s listing is the links pointing to it. If you analyze these links carefully you will notice that there are over 500,000 links pointing to the adobe page with the word’s “Click Here”.

When compare this with the new caffeine update you will notice that Adobe no longer hold their number one placement on the term, instead clickhere.com, a marketing agency have gained the top spot.

This may not seem like anything major but ClickHere.com has less than 30 links pointing to it in comparison with over 500,000 pointing to Adobe. Going by what SEO experts know about Google’s ranking algorithm, Adobe should dominate the number one position without doubt.

Google have either made dramatic changes to the importance of keywords within a domain name or more likely, Google are changing their back link algorithm in quite a drastic way. My guess is that Google has either found a way to detect “spammy” links from services link Text-Link-Ads or back links have taken a step back and now other factors are playing a more important role in the ranking algorithm.