More info on the Caffeine Update

Google recently opened up a preview of our new Caffeine update, and I wanted to give a little more background on this change. At the Real-Time CrunchUp a few weeks ago, I joked that the half-life of code at Google is about six months. That means that you can write some code and when you circle back around in six months, about half of that code has been replaced with better abstractions or cleaner infrastructure. Six months is an exaggeration, but Google is quite serious about scrutinizing our codebase regularly and rewriting the parts that don’t scale well to make them more robust, more elegant, or faster.

Here are some questions and answers:

Q: How do I check out the Caffeine update?
A: If you search on http://www2.sandbox.google.com you can get a preview of how the search results will change over the next few weeks and months.

Q: It doesn’t look any different to me?
A: The Caffeine update isn’t about making some UI changes here or there. Currently, even power users won’t notice much of a difference at all. This update is primarily under the hood: we’re rewriting the foundation of some of our infrastructure. But some of the search results do change, so we wanted to open up a preview so that power searchers and web developers could give us feedback.

Q: Is this Caffeine Update because of Company X or Y is doing Z?
A: Nope. I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months. I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we’ve done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward. Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying to improve.

Q: The url http://www2.sandbox.google.com doesn’t seem to work for mobile phones? I can only test on google.com, not google.co.uk?
A: That’s right. For now this is a only a preview, so we didn’t hook up a mobile version or an international version at this point. You’ll have to search on google.com to see the results right now.

Q: How do I give Google feedback?
A: If you want to give us feedback on how the search results are different, look on the search results page for a link at the bottom of the page that says “Dissatisfied? Help us improve.” Click on that link and type your feedback in the text box. Make sure to include the word caffeine somewhere in the feedback.

Q: Is there a way to give feedback in person?
A: Yes! If you want to give me feedback in person, I’ll be at Search Engine Strategies San Jose this week. I’m doing a site review panel on Thursday, or just walk up and say hello!

You can also read more about this change on Techmeme if you’re interested.

Update, August 11, 2009: I did a video interview about the Caffeine update with Mike McDonald. The Caffeine info begins about 1:15 into the video. You can also enjoy seeing my very-short summer haircut in the video. ๐Ÿ™‚

Update, August 12, 2009: Embedding the video interview directly:

187 Responses to More info on the Caffeine Update (Leave a comment)

  1. It appears to filter the results by using &gl=uk, but is it giving true results of the new engine?

  2. By the way, if you want to learn a lot more about Google updates (data refresh vs. algorithm change vs. infrastructure change), here’s a few resources:

    http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/explaining-algorithm-updates-and-data-refreshes/

    http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/whats-an-update/

    http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/more-info-on-updates/

    and I also made a video back in 2006 that’s pretty relevant:

  3. Whatever change you made, I like it. All of my personal sites, and the sites of the company I work for rank higher on the new results.

    Good job!

    Seriously though, for a few selected queries, I’m seeing more authoritative sites rank higher. So that’s good.

  4. Hi Matt,

    Been sussing this out all morning, from the Google blog and your post its seems there are algo changes / updates on the current sandbox. I’ve noticed some definate changes in the how the SERP is different in the sandbox in my play this morning.

    Could you confirm this?

  5. Daniel Sterling

    Matt,

    Can you (or another engineer at Google) speak more about the specific infrastructure changes? I ask as a fellow curious software developer.

    For example, (just speculation), “We reworked the indexing backend to automatically push continuous real-time updates to all datacenters,” or “The ranking system automatically reweights individual algorithms based on real-time clickstream data from google.com,”

    Just looking for some cool thing to ogle over at the water-cooler tomorrow ๐Ÿ™‚

    — Dan

  6. It’s always frightening when search engines start screwing with their algorithms, but Google seem to get it consistently right. Looking forward to it!

  7. Hi Matt, thanks for the post, i always find them very informative. I’m all for the best search results, after all i use google to find what i want.

    I have a site that has been de-indexed from google. I requested reconsideration but still not indexed. i have posted a question about it Sitepoint Forum Question if you can help. cheers scott

  8. Nice write up Matt…

    My website shows my free host url instead of my purchased domain name?

    Caffeine!

  9. Search results are very different IMO. Perhaps better? Not sure what to make out of it and how it effects website owners who gets traffic for specific keywords (I am not that good in SEO). I have searched for the keyword “linux” and “chess” both gave me different results for the sandboxed version and the regular version. Looking forward to it – I have faith in google to do a good job.

    The “power googler” side of me likes it but the “website owner” side of me is a bit concerned.

  10. Like what I see, though I have to admit it isn’t very different from the regular Google currently. Does it also give a preview into the future of currently penalized sites?

  11. I find the timeline and related searches quite interesting, great for reviewing relevant keywords.
    The reviews option, are the results primarily from blogs and review websites?

  12. One major change I am seeing does appear to involve Twitter. A search for BOB BIGELLOW on the standard Google search shows Bob’s Twitter profile as the first result, followed by some other Bob Bigelow’s personal site (one L) as the second link. However, a search for BOB BIGELLOW on Caffeine shows Bob’s Twitter profile as the first result, followed by an additional indented result from Twitter as the second result. Furthermore, there is a plus-link “Show more results from twitter.com” that appears below the second result. Clicking this shows five additional links (instantly?) all from Twitter and all associated with Bob’s Twitter content.

  13. john chen and Daniel Sterling, most of the changes are in things like our core indexing, so there’s less changes for things like rankings. Lots of users won’t notice a big difference.

    pavs and McMohan, we’re not looking to make huge changes in ranking with this new infrastructure. Some rankings will change, but that’s not the main thrust of the infrastructure.

    Steven, if you don’t want to mention your domain name/free host url here, feel free to use the “caffeine” feedback mechanism from the post to pass on the specifics.

  14. I have one personal blog and some sites working on. While searching on Sandbox version I found its a big ranking difference for my blog but for my other sites is quiet same.
    Ok Matt, my question is, “Is the result will be exactly what we are watching in sandbox version or it could be different?”

  15. Search is the soul of Google. It is the bedrock of Google’s entire operations. I trust whatever Google’s tweaks and updates of its search capability, it is for the benefit of the world.

  16. My initial comparisons running the new caffeine search engine result pages vs. the current / not so current crawl data did show significant improvements for 2 distinct types of results (1) a broader interpretation of context across synonyms and stemmed keywords and (2) a Vince update remix which favored authority-rich branded sites such as Technorati and Facebook.

    It will be interesting to see just how far, deep or frequent the crawls will be for content bordering on supplemental. The notion of pages “getting a second chance” in droves of billions for everything that falls in between should make for some interesting rankings through the fusion of the old and the new.

    Is the swap of engines imminent at this point, or just a juxtaposition at present to see which wins the stand off?

  17. Hi Matt,
    I’m working in Turkey’s largest online book seller. Our pages rank well on 1st page of Google.com.tr but none of our pages rank well in cafeine. And after for a couple of searches, cafeine gave 403 forbidden error. It is written “We’re sorry, … but your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application”…
    I think there’s something wrong with the Turkish version of Cafeine. Am I right??

  18. Hi Matt, I hope to run into you @ SES … but If I don’t, can you cover this on a future video, post, etc. How can we “teach” Google NOT to do “Did you mean: xyz” when there is a site that matches what the user was looking for?

    There are a few domains that are important to me, and Caffeine thinks people are searching for .com instead of .somethingelse

    Try this one, search for Molly.FR or Molly.co.uk, Google has
    Did you mean: molly.com
    and below that, the site the user was looking for.

    But If you search for molly.se or molly.dk, you do not get the “did you mean.” Why?
    (I’m not associated with the above Molly sites)

    Thanks, @SocialJulio

  19. As always looks interesting. The ‘new’ database must be crawling far deeper as i see i just of x10 on number of results returned for some keywords.

    Do we know the timescale for the move to the new engine ? Are we talking this year or or does it still have a long way to go ?

  20. Going through changes often brings some hardship, but we need to coupe up with it in order not to leave behind.

  21. Hello,

    You mentioned there is no UK preview yet, but the same upgrade will still be happening on the international sites I guess. Will the roll out be the same time.

    Fascinating stuff!

    Julie

  22. Hi Matt

    The URLs are using # to store parameters rather than a standard query string. Is this just for the sandbox or will this be the case when the change is rolled out?

    http://www2.sandbox.google.com/#hl=en&q=car&aq=f&oq=&aqi=g10&fp=Zf6F-1XmmwQ

  23. Matt, Google is broke again, all my site pages are no longer #1 for all my chosen search terms. Please fix ASAP ๐Ÿ˜‰

    BTW, you do realise you are causing about 1 billion EXTRA Google searches per day by posting this info? Of course you do ๐Ÿ™‚

  24. The best thing about http://www2.sandbox.google.com is that there are absolutely no sponsored links in the results. This is my new home page!

  25. Some very interesting changes in rankings here. Only minor, but some of my sites have gone up and some down.

    Now I have to try and figure out why?

  26. Is the blue cross next to a result denoting Google Business/Maps listing new or is this only peculiar to the .com SERPS? I can’t recall seeing it in .co.uk results.

  27. The results seem to be the same for first page, although I’m seeing some pretty low rankings further down for pages of mine that were on page 3 / 4…

    Funny thing though is people are spamming the G Webmaster Blog link you gave us Matt – maybe you should change their usernames to deathwish1 and deathwish2!

  28. Thumbs up on this update — I hope it is released soon — any idea when it will actually be moved to production??

    For my site, which is a quality content site, we are regularly having other ‘marketed’ websites getting higher results in google and this update seems to filter out a lot of the pages which got to the top by marketing over content. Kudos to google!

  29. it is not different for my web sites that real search on google.com

    mayby it’s better=)

    it was usefull video to watch

  30. Thanks Matt, thanks for the post and to let us know about Google caffeine updates.

  31. Bing is still producing better results…….

    As far as feedback goes, once Google starts sending me a check for my time, I’ll provide feedback but since I don’t have my lips firmly planted on Matts rear, I don’t work for free.

    All those SEOs who give feedback about their sites are providing Google a nice target to shoot at.

    Google is the evil corporate enemy and must be treated as such.

  32. I’ve been keeping an eye on quite a few searches for several months now. It sure does seem like a lot of irrelevant content is gone. Nice work, Google!

  33. Back 5 or 10 years ago there was a lot of talk about the importance of pages that actually had the information you were looking for versus pages that had lots of links related to the topic you were searching for. Since then, Google seems to have been focusing on returning pages that have the information. The sandbox version seems to focus on pages with links a bit more on some of the searches I did (City, ST and “free books online”) The difference is slight (maybe one or two extra “link pages” in the top 10) but noticable.

  34. Interesting! What I’m most curious about at this moment, is if there’s a specific reason for the fact that some terms deliver less results then before. In the Sandbox most search terms provide much more results then the normal results, but I’ve found some terms which provide less results. We’ll see ๐Ÿ˜‰ Anyhow my personal opinion is that the results look better and join up better, eventough the differences are not that big.

  35. Results that return a stock ticker aren’t showing the chart – though this may well be expected.
    I also noticed that page modification dates don’t seem to be appearing whereas they do on a normal search – not sure if that’s deliberate or another side effect of the testing setup.

  36. i made a page to compare the two its here Google vs Google caffine it helps to see the two side by side

  37. My first impression, after just a quick comparison:

    Lots of changes in the snippets. Is that because of working with a separate index or a deliberate change?

    Except for some snippet changes, for most queries the first 4 or 5 results seem to be unchanged. The next 5 or 6 change drastically.

  38. Hi Matt, i’d like to bring to your attention a serious YouTube bug that’s been around for more than a month (subscriptions basically aren’t working anymore for a lot of people). Here’s just one of the forum threads:
    http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/thread?tid=5e4bc580dae2eb68&hl=en
    Maybe you can forward this to the YouTube guys… Sorry for being off-topic.
    Thanks!

  39. just did some specific searches and all is much the same, give or take a place or two, which is what i’d have expected for some quite specific searches

    then did some searches where i sort of knew i’d not like the results and they look much better better

    it doesn’t actually surprise me that much, that it is getting better that is … and it will be interesting to see how this impacts searches when you go live and also, just thinking about it, it might be quite interesting to see how the sites that you might be trying to weed out (maybe) where returned results are of no value, change too

  40. So why is Chrome the #1 hit when you search for “browser”, exactly?

    Chrome gets more links and buzz than Firefox?! I think not.

  41. Noticing additional weight on social aspect of search and real time searchโ€ฆ.
    sign of things to come?

    ( wikipedia dominance is an eye sore though)

    -AD

  42. Thanks for the information.

    I did notice that the results no longer include dates for blog posts. I was wondering if you knew the reasoning behind this change. I sometimes use the year as an indicator of relevancy when looking for something specific.

  43. โ€œIs the result will be exactly what we are watching in sandbox version or it could be different?โ€

    Good question, Sapna. Most of the search result rankings should be the same, because what’s changing is infrastructure under the hood of the search engine. But Caffeine is a radical revamp (more like a complete rewrite) of large parts of our system, so not all the rankings will be unchanged. That’s part of why we wanted to ask for feedback before things are fully deployed.

    “Is the swap of engines imminent at this point, or just a juxtaposition at present to see which wins the stand off?”

    Jeffrey Smith, in my personal opinion, we’ll definitely move forward with the new infrastructure. The exact timing is still being decided though.

    “You mentioned there is no UK preview yet, but the same upgrade will still be happening on the international sites I guess. Will the roll out be the same time.”

    Julie Yeardye, that’s still being decided. I don’t know how much work it would be to put the new Caffeine system at (say) one data center IP address that people could then query from around the world. But that’s a possibility.

    “Google is the evil corporate enemy and must be treated as such.”

    spamhound, you’re certainly welcome to your opinion, but thanks for stopping by anyway!

    “did some searches where i sort of knew iโ€™d not like the results and they look much better better”

    Damian, glad to hear it. ๐Ÿ™‚

  44. Hi Matt,

    Does the caffeine update affect image searches? One feature that I have seen on another search engine for images is the continuous scroll effect where you never have to click on ‘page 2’ it just keeps loading as you scroll down. I really like it and have started doing more image searches on that search engine. . .

  45. Thanks for posting the sandbox URL, I personally didn’t notice any search result changes in my domains, I’m happy ๐Ÿ™‚

  46. Hi Matt,

    I tried searching many different types of searches both broad and long tail and noticed that there seems to be more social media/networking sites at a higher position…any plans to include a “social search” or real time search of social status updates, etc? Either way, I look forward to seeing the improvements…Thanks!

  47. Also, if you fill out a feedback form, it send you to a “thank you” page with a normal search box at the top.

    Which doesn’t work – it just keeps sending you back to the thanks page. Not exactly the end of the world mind you!

  48. Matt,

    If we say that Google pre-Bigdaddy was Google 1.0 (for historical purposes only), and that Google Bigdaddy was Google 2.0, and that Google Searchology (2007) was Google 3.0, would it be appropriate to say that Google Caffeine is Google 4.0?

  49. Why did Googlechoose the word “sandbox” in the url matt ??

  50. Wow
    this is good tool : http://www2.sandbox.google.com/
    For me nothing big changed
    I will test it for a while now.

  51. Matt

    People are saying if you add country specific “&gl=uk” etc to the end of the url you get regionalised results of caffeine, is that correct?

    Also, is this www2 site bang up to date in terms of data/backlink data etc or has other stuff to be folded in yet?

    I know you’ve said in the past you like to work with a stable data set when testing new things…

  52. focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward

    Well “relentlessness” in this regard is something I’ve really been missing for years now … this caffeine has rather been dearly due, as search result quality was rapidly degrading to something that looked like “random results” only (up to the point where I doubted spam fighting and / or logical ranking took place at all) – which could be achieved with far less of a technical overhead than seems to be involved until now. I really don’t understand what you need all those algorithms and things for, when your results aren’t any better than those of the next hand-made directory – look for “Bed and Breakfast in Sheffield” … (that’s on the non-caffeine state of things). You better be aware of that, as far as organic search is concerned, you have mostly been living from your brand, your name, not from cutting-edge technology ^^

    -luzie-

  53. Are new changes made on all languages ?
    I’m getting nice ranking for French users. But I’m unlucky with the new version ๐Ÿ™

    I think localization algorithms are changing ! And I hope in a good way ๐Ÿ™‚
    Thanks Matt for the update.

  54. @Kamal Hasa:

    >>> Why did Googlechoose the word โ€œsandboxโ€

    ‘Cause at the moment it’s a thing to play with only … ๐Ÿ˜€

    -luzie-

  55. Matt any idea when this index will be public?

    How many times a year do you plan on rolling this sandbox index public?

  56. Our homepage ranks considerably higher with the new ‘Caffeine’ version ๐Ÿ™‚

    One thing I would love to see from my perspective as a user, and not an SEO is Google devaluing OLDER articles, links and information.

    I am often trying to look for some specific information only to find that I am reading blog/forum posts back from 2005, 2006 etc.

    These are often quite outdated posts that are not relevant to my search so I would love to see some improvements in this area.

    Sorry to go off topic on this one!

    Anthony

  57. Awesome! i did some searches today on the caffeine google and found very targeted results on the first 2 pages. For example, I was looking some some specific photoshop tutorials that were hard to find last week, and with the caffeine version, BOOM great results. Keep up the fine work..Way to steal bing’s thunder buahahahahaha

  58. For my keywords, it changed quite a bit. For example, I had a #1 listing with site links and that one got pushed to #2 with no site links or indented listing. I don’t like this change at all, obviously. Gotta figure out how to make these search results NOT come to fruition! What in the world would cause such a change?

  59. I had to remove all links to get it published( which show relevance) , thought you knew something about spam. If you need the links let me know.

    Quick example for search flow and results: Google new, old, Bing:
    Search flow:
    What’s available: ./-> Product types
    -> Reduce to wanted/needed Product type
    -> -> Reduce to Brand
    -> -> -> Reduce to Brand product
    -> -> -> -> Price
    -> -> -> -> -> Buying Preference

    ——–
    Search: bike racks review

    Result first returned:

    Bing has actually advertising as first result with no relevant info for
    this search, other wise same as old Google.

    New Google, hands down
    —-
    Search to limit results (I have found the type I need, but not the
    Brand): hitch bike racks review

    All fail by delivering the same results:
    —–
    Search for a specific brand I’m interested in: kuat bike racks review
    Bing shows ads for Thule bike racks as first result, otherwise:

    Pass to all, but Bing is trying to sell me a different Brand. One I have
    already discarded.
    —-

    Search for ready to buy: kuat bike racks price

    Bing again tries to sell Thule, even I’m interested only in kuat,
    otherwise:
    Pass to all:

    Now I want to really buy, never buy from anybody over the net without
    having it in stock:

    Search: kuat bike racks in stock
    Only old Google deliverers relevant result

  60. Hi Matt,

    Well couple of questions about new infrastructure.

    1. Does the new infrastructure takes input from Google Analytics at all?

    2. Should we say it is a co-incidence that MSN&Yahoo merging together and Google releasing its NGen Engine preview in the same period of the year?

    Just to add I am a Googler day in day out.

  61. I like the lack of adverts, seems a bit of a new direction for Google advert free search ๐Ÿ˜‰

    Only -ve thing I noticed so far is some blog post articles lack dates in the description (which appeared broken but useful in the live version) – drupal by the looks of it, although drupal is very good at hiding itself.

  62. Matt, just wanted to say that I’ve been using the update at my main search all day, and I have noticed a notable difference in some searches, and they look amazing! Honestly, I’ve used Google for years, and the search continues to amaze me. I can always get what I want easily on the first page. It almost seems like you can read my mind ๐Ÿ˜‰

  63. Merci pour le lien vers Caffeine, je vais voir si il y a une diffรฉrence avec le Google actuel. Je voie que Google ne dit rien mais travail en douce. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  64. Interesting to note that the number of results are about 1/4 on the new engine, the search was faster and more current/active sites seem to be ranking better – very nice.

    Results 1 – 10 of about 41,800,000 for [keyword]. (0.21 seconds) <-Current
    Results 1 – 10 of about 11,400,000 for [keyword]. (0.08 seconds) <-Caffeine

    Anyone else seeing this?

  65. Man, I wish more companies would actually make it their GOAL to have codebase half-lives of six months…

  66. Way to feed the SERP addicts, Matt ๐Ÿ™‚ It’s a good thing that;

    The views expressed on these pages are mine alone **and not those of my employer**.

    You do still work for Google?

  67. Hi,
    Wow its fast. Is that because it is not getting the traffic google.com is getting, or can we expect it to be just as quick when it is finally rolled out?

    The results seem fine, not much of a differance as far as I can tell, but maybe if I started doing comparisons then I may notice a few differences.

    One thing I did notice when doing a search for the term “uvrx” (without quotes) was an unrelated youtube video on the first page of the results.
    The only relationship with the searched term is part of the URL: “watch?v=UvRX-qPR6ZU”.
    There is no other mention of the searched term on the page (apart from the embed code).
    If this URL is randomly/dynamically created, then I can see no reason why it should be in the results.

    Sharing my opinion

    Cheers
    James

  68. Matt,
    While this is in sandbox, will analytics code be tracking clicks and data FROM sandbox? It will be interesting to see traffic origins.

    Thanks,
    Bill

  69. I checked out some local business searches for Foster City, CA, which I know to some extent and can’t see any material difference for the top 20 results. Further down there is some seesawing between indented results on the new version vs the old one, and some differences in ranks.

  70. I wonder if it ‘s possible that someday, when we search something in my own language, google can give me options to filter search results of the language i specify using , i dont know, maybe google translation technique?!
    this i think is quite useful, because the internet is not only full of english content, and if you ‘re looking for something not that popular, say SEO, you may feel hopeless in searching the net. If someday, i can expression my search expectation in my own language, and google can give the the result from other language using translation technique to calculate the keyword relevance.

    and another advice, when does google begins to put real respect on original content? i find that, if you run your blog on your own domain, and someday you publish some real good post, and many websites copy this post. when you search something which has high relevance to this post, but it seems that google put those website above your blog. i see that quite a lot of times. and i think maybe google should really put more weight on original content, not the copy one.

  71. Hi Matt,

    My blog ranked #17 (“work at home”) for one of the highly searched keyword in google.com but never appear in top1000 search results in sandbox. I have sent “caffeine” inserted message in feedback but won’t be receiving any reply there. Hope you can help me to find out what is the reason my blog have been removed from it’s listing.

  72. Wonderfull… i am able to get my personal site very easily now. Great work guys… Keep going.

  73. Looks about the same for the SERPs I track. Thanks for the heads-up. Sure better than learning about a change from a client whose site suddently dropped off the map.

  74. Sir so this changes only regarding search result or it affects any other elements like PR Measure or number of back link affects search engine result… hoping ans soon…

  75. Hi Matt,

    I don’t know why but i can’t see any major change in ranking for the keywords which i use to search i only see the ranking drop for 4 to 5 position for my few sites.

  76. RE: “One thing I did notice when doing a search for the term โ€œuvrxโ€ (without quotes) was an unrelated youtube video on the first page of the results”

    I hate the way Google has lowered the bar for YouTube videos shunting more relevant pages down. The most annoying part is that Google allows for users to CHOOSE videos only, yet forces them upon us. Same goes for images.

    But, yes, it is super fast, which I suspect is due to low traffic compared to other Google SEs. Reminds of the days BEFORE Google became a household name, man were SERPs quick back then.

  77. Seeing minor differences in auto suggest. the remaining letter choices are bolded as you go. The sandbox runs out of suggestions a little sooner than the production site.

    For a search with few or no ads:

    The sandbox:
    Results 1 – 100 of about 207,000 for kazakhstan archaeology. (0.38 seconds)

    Production site:
    Results 1 – 100 of about 298,000 for kazakhstan archaeology. (0.44 seconds)

    Sandbox:
    Results 1 – 100 of about 126,000 for mohenjodaro archaeology. (0.56 seconds)

    Production:
    Results 1 – 100 of about 39,400 for mohenjodaro archaeology. (0.57 seconds)

    For an AdWords sales manager’s delight:
    Sandbox:
    Results 1 – 100 of about 23,800,000 for florida travel. (0.33 seconds)

    Production:
    Results 1 – 100 of about 62,800,000 for florida travel. (0.51 seconds)

    For a completely obscure term:
    Sandbox:
    Results 1 – 100 of about 49,400 for ash nallawalla. (0.20 seconds)

    Production:
    Results 1 – 100 of about 6,090 for ash nallawalla. (0.50 seconds)

    So at least from Australia I am seeing the sandbox slower some of the time and faster a touch more often. Not seeing the sandbox faster all the time.

  78. I want to know more about the specific infrastructure changes?

  79. Faster results return, but doesn’t allow the FF googlepreview to work.
    Search results do appear different, we’re up on some and down on others.

  80. You cannot rely on Google’s * seconds. I get .33 seconds for Matt Cutts but the SERPs take at least 1 second. Same goes for Googles estimates of pages returned, they are often VERY wrong.

  81. So… Why exactly is Chrome the #1 hit when you search for โ€œbrowserโ€?

    Chrome gets more links and buzz than Firefox? I think not!

  82. @needmoney

    er well for some code bases you dont want to do that dont forget that Google can ignore a lot of things other big ssytems must absolutly not fail on – I did 9 months parallel running on one Telcom Billing system for example and that was a baby when compare to monsters like CSS

    Allso the fiasco when one of the recent relese for Ubuntu broke the tcp/ip stack for a lot of users.

    of course having such a quick turn around might indicate that G prefers the “good enough for jazz” appraoch – wheer some companies take a more Zero defect appreach

    Ps Matt when are you going on TWIG with leo

  83. Hey,

    I have seen good improvement in my site positioning, we need to wait for the results to stabilize I guess, its too early to decide on the new algorithm. However, the indications are good so far:)

    Excellent timing to open the SE for public testing.

    Janaki

  84. Results for some of my clients’ sites seems to be good, there is an improvement in the rankings, but how long will it take to rankings get stabilized?

  85. It looks to me as though the sites I have written rank higher too!! When is the release!?!? ;o)

    Seriously though – is the search running from a live dataset, or is it a backup?

  86. Stop making life too easy for the brands…spare a thought for the little guys.

  87. thanks for this information……
    but can u please tell me that when is this update is going to be released……..
    and yes i thnk it will make search process much easier……..

  88. I used it for a while now, and here are my comments:
    1- Google favors new blogs : Google seem to drive traffic to new blogs, and that is for single posts not for their main keyword, that is if a blog called [pictures] it does not show high on this particular keyword but it may come first on [picture of president Obama] ,however old blogs are the complete opposite, rank high in the main keyword but low for single posts.

    2- Google favors links on DMOZ: while almost not being updated, Google still favors sites having links on DOMZ.

  89. Why does google not drop DMOZ? Its out of date and kind of a useless resource as most sites are coming soon and last updated in 2002 (most of the time) if googles so serious about fresh new results ect get rid of that!

  90. I’ve created a little tool to compare them. And after doing about 150+ searches I am seeing some strange behaviour for keywords in domain names, when I have equally strong websites, but for longer search phrases, keywords have a higher sensitivity, but for shorter search phrases there is a lower sensitivity. Has anyone experienced something similar.

    Also I’m happy that the image searches aren’t so prominent, but I guess they will be back sometime.

    Paul

  91. when the testing period will be over, how much time there will be needed to implement caffeine ?

  92. Is caffeine live already? I did a search last night and Google found a document from a site that I knew to be less than one hour old.

  93. Yes I’m curious too whether the sandbox results are from an up to date/very recent data set or whether they are based on old data. Basically, can we expect the results we see in there now to be pretty much the same when it goes public?

  94. To follow up on my “dates in results” question.

    I’m seeing some results with them and some without. I haven’t really seen anything consistent on why some have them and some don’t. I’m just curious if not having the date on the post means it is a “fresher” result?

  95. I see improvements in the search results, they are more relevant. Great job!

  96. Matt,

    Isn’t it usefull to include international searches as well, we are always behind and waiting what happens to our search results.

    Rob

  97. The sandbox results look great to me, they seem to be quite a bit more relative.

  98. CompareGoogle.com has been helpful in finding difference in search results for the two algorithms. Just put in some keywords and see what changed. Could be helpful for SEO engineers.

  99. good news for SEO guys they will get something new to talk about, being a site admin worried as it means less sleep till everything is live and settled.

    Best of luck to both Google, Owners and SEOs

  100. Great move to give people a sandbox ahead of a major upgrade. I hope Google does this for all major upgrades.

  101. I can’t see much difference to be honest, but then you did say the changes were more under the hood than anything, so I guess that is expected.
    I’m sure it is all for the best though!

  102. Impressed, actually. It’s hella snappy, and results seem to be more relevant for the search terms I checked.

  103. In comparing results for technical related search terms, I found the sandbox to have more relevant results in terms of usefulness. Keep up the good work!

  104. Matt,

    Ran a few of my #1 in Google positions on the sandbox, all dropped a spot or two. The new winners are high quality STORES – helps to have affiliate links:-(

    Morris

  105. If YOUR (nobody in particular) pages are ranking well, then Google SERPs are relevant, if not, they’re not relevant ๐Ÿ˜‰

    Gotta agree about DMOZ. Man, it must be slowest web site death in history.

    I can see NO LOGICAL reason why keyword Domains should be boosted, directly or indirectly, via Anchor text. I doubt Google would do that, they are too prudent, IMO.

  106. I have got many first page results in this update. I should thank Matt & hi team. ๐Ÿ˜‰

  107. Hi Matt
    Will there be a decaff version?

    ๐Ÿ˜‰

  108. I see a tendency for local businesses to be pushed down the page by large directories. So for the “Mill Valley Widgets” search there are more listings like “widgets.com/mill-valley-widgets” than for local widget businesses optimized for that local search. I realize that the sandbox can’t properly handle localization when it comes to other countries and languages. Could this be a factor in these results? The problem with cramming the SERPs with these directories is that, besides adding a layer of complexity for the user, the top links within these directories are usually purchased. The “sponsored” listings are often not local listings at all.

  109. Matt,

    We did a test of 50 queries from Google Trends yesterday, and found that Caffeine was actually SLOWER by 20% on average, but the Index was bigger by 233%. Not sure if this was due to the temporal nature of queries from Google Trends. Then, we took 25 generic keywords and found that Caffeine was faster by 23% on average, but the index was smaller by 7%. Happy to send you the spreadsheet if you want… I’m sure Caffeine is still new and more work will be done on it, but we were a little confused as to the above results…

  110. The sandbox has been down all day:

    “We are upgrading elements of our data center. The Caffeine sandbox should be available for searching again in a few hours.”

  111. I hope it will be more accurate and could you concentrate some attention on Estern Europe.Your top 10 is full with websites with illegal content like music and movies.I think G needs more live support.Anyway I hope it will be better afterall.

  112. BTW I think the haircut suits you, but I guess your wife opinion is the one that matters.

  113. Ahh, just saw that Caffeine is a result of the rewriting of GFS…interesting.
    Are you able to say anything about BigTable and how that redesign is incorporated, with which Google apps are being moved to it?

  114. Honestly, Matt, I don’t get it. At the risk of saying something incredibly unpopular, why do you care what most of us (“us” meaning the marketing/webmaster/geek community in general) think when it comes to updates such as this?

    1) We can’t accurately compare rankings as such, due to variance across datacenters. As a side note, this also helps to perpetuate the notion of rank checking as a viable concept and you may well be indirectly shooting yourself in the foot as a result. Do you guys really want to have the WebPosition Golds of the world taking this particular post out of context?

    2) We’ll generally only compare rankings for terms we have a vested interest in (i.e. our own keywords and phrases).

    3) Even though you said that the impact in terms of rankings should be minimal since this relates to indexing, people are going to see changes in ranking simply because of past precedent when it pertains to updates. While I’m sure some of these changes do exist, they would likely be minor at best and extreme aberrations would be caught by both us and regular users. In other words, we will see things not because they exist, but because we’re conditioned to think that we’re supposed to.

    4) Not that I’m second-guessing you on this, because I’m not sure anyone would have seen this coming, but people are already building “tools” and spamming your own blog in the perceived interest of “helping the community”. This means that every time you launch an update and tell us, more people are going to create more “tools” that will further send the SEO community down the garden path.

    5) This is going to sound somewhat contradictory until I fully explain it, but without seeing referral traffic, it’s almost impossible to form an opinion about an update one way or the other. I’m not just talking about “did my referral traffic go up for my chosen keywords X, Y, and Z”, but rather “what did I receive referral traffic for? Is it relevant? Did I target it? How strange are the phrases? What type of volume am I getting that way?” etc. In other words, I’d want to see the quantity and, far more importantly, the quality of referral traffic before I make any kind of judgement. I can’t do that with a sandbox.

    You guys areat the point where you have almost no other choice but to launch an update, shut up about it, and see what people notice based on unprompted feedback (e.g. quality control/spam reports). It’s noble that you want to keep us in the loop, don’t get me wrong…I’m just not sure that we’re generally smart and responsible enough to handle that information correctly. If you really want/need to, start building focus groups full of people such as say Lenssen who get it, who aren’t biased, and who actually can give quality feedback.

    I know that’s not really the type of answer you were looking for as such, but I don’t think there is a legitimate answer to this question in this case.

  115. Hey Matt, I run a site that over 600,000 people/month search for by the brand name of the site. It’s not a generic phrase and whereas it always shows #1 in google with the sublinks too, it no longer shows at all in caffeine. There are no other sites that are good results for the search term (link that now shows top is my twitter feed!). The site gets 100m pageviews/month and I don’t do any active SEO so not sure what could be the cause here? Users are going to be very confused not to find it. I’ve submitted a report as you explain with “caffeine” in the text. Hopefully just some kind of glitch. Feel free to drop me a line if you need any info.

    A.

  116. speed is good, rankings are little diffrent than live results but better, first time my oldtimer page has top 10. Caffeine!

  117. Re: The new ‘do: Matt is officially a Chrome dome now!!

    (I cannot believe I’m the first person to say that!)

    More importantly, Gareth James is right. The brands are *not* all that and a bag of chips. They’re often bloated, arrogant, slow to respond and loathe to customize.

    A lot of the little guys are offering great info and provide valuable services/products with amazing customer service, but the emphasis on brands drowns them out.

    I wish I had serious ninja coding skills. I’d develop a little-guy search engine and name it something like … jingle ??

  118. These are some pretty big changes that will effect a lot of peoples websites and blogs. I do notice a difference between searches of google and google caffeine but we’ll have to wait until caffeine is implemented fully to see what impact it will have but it’s something to keep our eyes on.

    Blaine

  119. Matt, I MUCH prefer reading your blog when you say ZILCH about SEO, or any hint of it. Anytime you post anything remotely close to SEO, you raise more questions (and add to SEO noise/confusion) than you answer.

  120. The good thing about Caffeine is it ranks the original content (of my site) higher than the website that copied word to word of my article (but the present google ranks the copied article higher than mine ), but the worst thing it still ranks the copied article next to mine , i really can understand cant google use an algorithm ( similar to copyscape ) to filter out the copied articles ???

    it really hurts when you put in the hard work and finally someone just does “ctrl+c n ctrl +v” and ranks higher than your originally written article , its a shame for a search engine that claims to be no1 , i dont think even matt would have an answer for this

  121. So glad I watched your vid with MM before I wrote my GG Caffeine article (for SPN). Gives much more info about it than the official blog post and other industry blog commentary. Question: Is Caffeine related to the BigTable rollout? (PS – keep the chrome dome, it suits you)

  122. Hello Matt,

    I have been studying this alot and it seems like many major sites with 70,000+ pages indexed are getting harmed by the new changes. Some of these sites only have like 13,000 indexed pages now. There are many other cases, like 120k pages indexed now down to 60k pages indexed. Perhaps others have already mentionioned this problem.

    Do you know about this?

    Is what I say correct?

    Does it happen to all sites, or just larger sites?

    Why would so many sites be having thousands of pages being taken out of the Google index?

    I hope for any answers you can give.

    Thank you.

  123. Hi Matt,

    Great post on the caffeine update, I’ve done loads of searches in caffeine and so far I’ve been very impressed – one thing I have noticed is the quality of results being brought back are far greater and more relevant for the user – which is only a good thing!

    Keep up the good work ๐Ÿ™‚

  124. Great explanation. From a practical perspective I feel the rankings will be more relevant as a result. Bill

  125. I think personally as my priority website is only 3 months old, I am welcoming these changes. If for instance I am at the top of my game in the Google search results, I will be feeling a bit of anxiety against the new search. I am hooked on the Google caffeine saga! I have found my self comparing listings between live results and the proposed change live results. Its taking up my time so get it live ha. Thanks for the information.

  126. Hi,

    I know you said above this is only on the .com atm but when can we exspect to see it on the .co.uk as people over here in the UK cant really test it as our SERP’s are all different on the .com to .co.uk due to location ๐Ÿ™

    So yer I would really like to see the caffeine on a .co.uk please so we can give it some good testing as we always get a second hand veiwing on these updates due to a change in SERP’s on .com

  127. Hey Matt,

    Is caffeine going to handle 301’s as well as the old infrastructure? We did a 301 with a domain about a month ago to a more relevant looking one and on the Caffeine search results it is like 2-3 pages back on all the search terms from what they are on the current results. Any reason why that may be happening? Maybe pulling from dated data centers?? If that keeps up should we just go back to the old domain??

  128. I have been using caffeine www2.sandbox.google.com from that days when i know it 1st time. After countinue searching cand comparing the SERPs (result pages), I got sign of happiness that our site is pure safe and getting more honorable position. I am very happy and thanking to Google.com and am totally agree with Goolge’s claim about caffine is “fast & relevant” .

    Thank you Matt , You too

  129. Matt,

    I had posted about a week ago for the first time and nothing showed up??

    I was wondering about how much consideration was giving to local search criteria? Perhaps you cannot comment on that? In our industry (medical, disability, handicap) there is a growing demand to find local dealers. In the past it has been dominated by manufacture direct sellers. Can you comment on any considerations you have given to “Caffeine” in this regard? Thanks Bob.

  130. The search results appear to be quite different from the existing search results. One has to find out the trend of change in the search results, i.e., whether it is for the better or some random changes. It is also not known when the new search algorithm would be introduced.

  131. Hi Matt,

    Does Google set deadline to release Caffeine to public? I actually do not like the name Caffeine, it is quite hard to remember for non-english speaking searcher like me. Thanks

  132. Matt – when can we expect these results to go live. The new search seems really good – exactly what I would expect from the company that leads in search. I have to tell you that I also do some advertising with Msn and was suprised to find out that my account quit working when bing came out. It was a technical glitch that affected 1000’s of acounts I was told. To this day they have not been able to fix it. Talking about screwing up – they roll out a new search looking for better results and ultimately more advertisers but shut down a decent percentage when they roll it out – ouch… My point is that I love the new search but please get it right before you roll it out! Thanks!

  133. Frantisek Malina

    Half-life 6 months ๐Ÿ˜†
    I bet Python re-indentation of is screwing up your diffs so you see everything in red every-time someone fixes an exception ๐Ÿ™‚

  134. Hello Matt,

    Just want to ask how accurate the google caffeine update can be? I’m so excited about this since one of my keywords points to my other website as the number one ranking in search engine results!

  135. I just checked the results today on sandbox and they have completely changed — very weird.

  136. And now the are back to where they were 2 or 3 days ago ๐Ÿ™‚

    Matt can you give us ANY idea of when this will be released???

  137. Hey Matt! Some rumors I have heard state that Caffeine now indexes flash .swf files and scans video for ‘key audio words’. How true is this?

  138. Google and DOMZ

    I know that Dmoz is a significant factor in Google ranking. However has anyone in the past 2 years been able to get a site indexed in dmoz? anyone? I know one person that told me he had to pay the moderator to be listed. Anyone else have to pay moderators to get listed? If there is no admin for a section in dmoz does your request just sit in limbo forever?

    Why put such significance on a directory that seems to be abandoned and doesnt take in new sites? Is this a oversight by Google or is Google going to devalue dmoz links?

    I would LOVE to see a Google rep setup a email account not traceable to Google and try and get a site listed in dmoz that doesnt show they work for Google.

  139. Heavy Google user

    Hey Google,

    I understand I am just one of millions that use your search engine every day and that I really do not count for much but how about offering some actual answers to the questions people have. I am not asking for secret facts that will allow me to trick your search engine but how about things like a date that the switch will occur?. How to report problems with the changes to someone that will actually read the question and respond?. My last question has to do with paid links. I have read on many sites that Google does not like webmasters selling links on their sites but is that not exactly what Google adsense does with it’s network partners?. Just seems like a double standard and unfair. In closing I ask that next Sept 11 you put aside your liberal love and support the military and the country and not just ignoring it on your homepage.

  140. From all the tests i made, i didn’t notice any changes, compared to the traditional page.

  141. Matt great hair cut! Now you can comb your hair with a wash cloth ๐Ÿ™‚
    When I first heard about caffeine, I was very concerned, so many of my clients are getting great results; I envisioned trying to explain to them all, why they just dropped to page 2, 3 or even worse ๐Ÿ™
    I feel better now after playing in the sandbox for a few days and doing lots of comparisons.
    Although I can definitely see differences, most of my clients have only moved 1 or 2 positions +/- so nothing huge. That is a load off my mind.
    Keep up the great work, I really enjoy your videos and great insight.
    Scott

  142. I’m excited to see the all the SEO/SEM changes that comes with this!

  143. Is there an expected ‘live’ date for Caffeine? I’m particularly interested in when the indexing speed is likely to change.

  144. @thatguy

    i’ve been a (fairly junior) editor at dmoz since 03 and quietly plug away at the submissions in my cats. i’m fascinated that webmasters, despite the instructions, submit their sites and don’t follow the guidelines. is it my job to edit them? up to a point. is it my job to totally rewrite the submission? no. will i get a rap on the knuckles from a senior editor if i don’t handle the submissions correctly. yep. am i going to overlook the crummy submissions and skip to the ones that try to follow the guidelines? yep. am i being paid for this work. nope.

    see where i’m going with this?

  145. hi..when caffeine will replace the actual google search ?

  146. The new caffeine seems to search a lot faster to me. Can you comment on why the current Google results are displaying slightly different results for just about every search. Our site would show #2 then #8 and then burried then back to 2?

  147. This update looks good to me, I notice that a fair amount of clutter seems to be gone. Well done let’s see the finished update. No doubt it will lift some and others will moan but it’s not an easy task with all that data and commerce being affected. Surely there is a risk attached to this sort of update, get it wrong and your brand takes a hit get it right and confidence rises.

  148. Any update on when Google Caffeine will be released/stop being a test version?

  149. Federico Rivera

    Hello, when will Google officially start using the caffeine algorithm? Will it be released on beta this year??

  150. Hi Matt, Any idea on how long this is going to take to implement and put Caffeine in place internationally ? mostly interested in google.fr
    Thanks !

  151. Matt,

    FYI.. The link to the sandbox brings up a page not found error.

  152. ๐Ÿ™‚
    I’m thinking that Caffeine Update is going live at the end of the year, exactly on 31 december / 1st january … isn’t it?

    What about the counter you can see clicking ‘I’m feeling lucky’ on google.com, with no keyword in the query box?

    ๐Ÿ˜€

    Am i talking about something near the truth?

    I wish a fine new year to all you.

  153. I have been reading the comments and there are countless people asking for updates as to when caffiene will be launched etc

    here is a video that was recorded in november (I think)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Je85soy_EY

    december 30th today, so we can be expecting it very soon

  154. Is Google caffeine live , i remember you saying it would go live after holidays…..

  155. In theory, it sounds like users may get more relevant info and hopefully less SPAM. But I guess we are going to need to play with if for a while before we really know. And rest assured we will be keeping any eye on all that spam in the index! Seems like there are soo many people spamming now there should be a union. “Local Spammers 404”

  156. I see google caffeine has started to kick in -its Jan. 12, 2010 and I have noticed big changes.

    Firstly, the competition for my keywords (which are in my domain name by the way) have gone way up by over 20 million results, and I am talking about a 4 year old site. This makes it far more difficult and competitive to rank in google.

    Secondly I see fast changes in results I guess Google likes speed however you do not stay in Google No. 1 position for more than an hour, this is very manipulative of traffic.
    I can’t see how you can justify that one site was not searched for – for more than 1 hour in the top slot and another site takes its place?

    Thirdly I see Google results are returning mostly institutional sites, not small business sites-this is very harmful to smaller site owners. The corporate sites offer little quality content, and are very salesy…..with ads. If I wanted a bunch of ads I would go to the classified section of usa classifed ads.

    Lastly while I tested google sandbox during the whole summer it was returning accurate results, now they are all over the place and very disorganized. A friend of mine started a brand new site days ago-it was indexed then it disappeared -then it re-appeared, then gone again. There was no stability in the indexing of a new site, and therefore it leads to problems for site owners. I don’t know why Google had to upset searches in a negative way – because the results so far are far from an improvement. What you have lost with the obsession of speed is good quality return of sites that have valid original content.

    I don’t want to see institutions only on goog’s first page – they are boring and not informative sites, plus offer no added value to the searchers request. If Google keeps returning wikipedia for instance – that dissolves other quality content and is a blatent preferencial return in results. I thought Caffeine was more targetted? It is not because wikipedia ranks first on almost any keyword search I have made in the past four years!!

    Until Caffeine gives a fair and unbiased search result for every user -not just the larger corporations -this is totally unfair and against FTC rules.

    This is a fair and honest opinion from several of my contacts and many people are all getting the same results -Caffeine has had a negative effect on sites that are several years old with fresh and interesting content.

    For instance I do a lot of research before I write my articles on what people are searching for -and my sites have dropped in Google search. I am not talking about spammy sites although I see when I compare Google’s search results -it is returning sites that are ranked very low in Alexa rank, and Quantum. So this makes no sense at all.

    I hope Matt -that this is an error on Google’s part -because it will be very difficult to defend these observations unless Google’ changes this recent tactic of manipulating traffic.

  157. Hello teri,
    I agree with you. I am also a Search engine optimizer, my 2-3 website have same prob due to Caffeine. Thanks to sharing your useful research:)

  158. So, what about it Matt? Where’s the update?

    We see it go live on a datacenter here and there, but it’s clearly far from full rollout.

  159. You have any idea about the Google Caffeine algorithm & when Google start using this officially.

  160. Speed has improved, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that caffeine has gone live.

  161. Hi Matt
    any insider on when Caffeine will be live…? or it is already?
    Thanks
    F

  162. One thing that I think would be nice to see one day, would be a search engine that would be able to rank websites by the how long the company has been in business, rank by business leaders for the local area or even perhaps based off the design and layout โ€“ or maybe even based off a user review rating system for local businesses.

    What annoys me the most after you do a search you get these Mickey Mouse companies with horrible websites showing up on the first page! Then you have to wade through the trash to find what you are looking for and most people do go past the first page, they will go back and refine their search. First impressions mean EVERYTHING on the web to me. Itโ€™s like reviewing resumes when you are looking to hire someone. If their resume is not well put together then it goes into my deleted box just as quick as it came into my inbox. On the flip side of it, is that a small percentage of them would be probably be excellent employees, however because they didnโ€™t take the time to put together a nicely formatted resume I will never know. This example translates over to the web, I am sure some of the companies are excellent but because they didnโ€™t take pride in developing a decent looking website then they are losing business. Competition in the SEO world is certainly the culprit cause of this of all this and I certainly love competition but If I open a horrible looking website I close out just as fast as I came in. So it would sure nice if Google could weed them out better.

    On another note – where can we find the test site for testing caffeine searches? The link above is no longer active.

    Thank You

  163. This is my first time visiting your blog. I appreciate you sharing the latest Google updates. I know that this blog was posted in August. The Caffeine preview is no longer available. I was wondering if Caffeine has already slowing been updating in Google Databases. I like what I see so far. Thanks!

  164. Caffeine looks to threaten to ability of small businesses to make an impact in local searches. I hope not, but with the emphasis on personalized search trends it will be a situation where the rich get richer and the new guy cannot find a way in.

  165. I think that Google is heading in the right direction with their focus on personal experience. I have looked at the same sites in the listing for many years and where I don’t doubt that they deserve their positions, I do occassionally find gems that have been overlooked and I like being able to give them priority in my searches.

    Maybe a “Shake it up” function would be nice … put in a keyword and spin the wheel ๐Ÿ˜‰

    Oh yeah, I think Google has won the Bing wars ๐Ÿ˜‰

  166. I’m confused with the whole caffeine update… did it start already? If so, is it done or still running?

  167. Hello Matt,

    All of the talk about the Caffeine update has died down yet we have not seen any major changes at this point. Please provide us with the status of the Caffeine update.

  168. Quick freebie for fellow SEOs: Just posted a Python snippet to ease the tracking woes in this bold, new personalized search world. I’d post it here, but Python, in all its glory, is whitespace sensitive and may not paste so well here. Instead, follow through to this location: http://blog.activewebsite.com/2010/02/19/overcoming-personalized-search-rank-tracking/

  169. What happened to Caffeine?

    Last we heard was “after the holidays”. We’re, uh, well past that now.

  170. Funny but the main differences I’ve seen with Caffeine have been to my own sites. The sites I’ve been optimizing for have actually seen an increase & sticking of rankings, but the ones I own for myself have actually dropped or disappeared from the rankings.

    I don’t know how much is attributed to Google Caffeine, but I’m sure it’s also due to some lack of housekeeping. Kinda like the plumbers home having leaky faucets : )

  171. Matt why are you guys not saying anything about Caffeine? You wanted to help with the nerves by not releasing before the holidays, but you have everyone freaking out now with the currect SERP’s as they look kinda crappy and people think this is Caffeine.. Please give an update.

  172. Matt,

    What’s the story with the Caffeine infrastructure update. The guys over at searchengineland seem to be saying that there are delays in rolling it out.
    Google Caffeine

    D

  173. By Matt and Google not saying anything is turning out to be a big joke! I don;t know about the rest of you guys, Im taking my search to Bing!!!

  174. There certainly seems to be some play in the SERPs at present. I’m a bit concerned about the appearance of url only listings, is there any news about what these may be?

  175. Hi Matt,
    When you said Caffeine would be rolling out after the holidays, did you mean for 2011?

  176. well, I’m an adwords user, so I really want to know does caffeine will affect my adwords cost and keyword rank?
    also I want to know when it start working? I even built a site for it.

  177. Is this still available? Or did you mean 2011?

  178. The guys over at searchengineland seem to be saying that there are delays in rolling it out.

  179. Hi Matt, thanks for the post, i always find them very informative. I don’t see how speed is that important when we are talking fractions of a second. The biggest obstacle for most people will be their own computer speed and internet connection.

  180. Back in August, Mark Attwood jokingly asked on this thread if Google intended to do a de-caff version, but as we’re almost a year on and there doesnt seem to be much progress with caffeine, its only fair to ask whether or not somebody on this project forgot to switch the kettle on.

    whats happening with it matt?

  181. Does Caffeine include the promised update to the system, whereby underscores and dashes in URLs will be treated equally? ๐Ÿ™‚

    http://www.timacheson.com/Blog/2009/aug/friendly_url_should_not_use_dashes_to_represent_spaces

  182. Is there already an official pronouncement on Google caffeine causing indexing problems?

  183. Some very interesting changes in rankings here. Only minor, but some of my sites have gone up and some down.
    Great info thanks seems like this is becoming more important by the day!

  184. An interesting article, I’m wondering how the caffeine update compares to the more recent Panda update.

  185. If you go white hat, the Google updates aren’t going to harm you any usually.

  186. Iโ€™m confused with the whole caffeine updateโ€ฆ did it start already? If so, is it done or still running?

  187. Interesting to note that the number of results are about 1/4 on the new engine, the search was faster and more current/active sites seem to be ranking better โ€“ very nice.

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