Google’s project to re-engineer its search architecture, called Caffeine, has attracted little attention outside of the webmaster community.
Based on the company’s general public statements, a few things are clear. First, Google will include some new criteria, most notably speed, to determine search rankings. Second, Google anticipates that search results will be affected.
In short, if your company depends on page rankings because of an e-commerce focus or customer interaction in a business-to-business orientation, Google Caffeine may keep you awake at night.
Major Update
Google adjusts its search parameters almost daily, but this is the first overhaul in three years. The changes are “under the hood” and won’t affect how the results look, so users won’t notice.
Caffeine is already being used across most of Google’s data centers, if not all of them as the update started being noticed January of 2010. You may see Google making small changes and make tweaks to improve the new algorithm. Google stated at Webmasterworld Pubcon 2009 they would ensure the update did not take place during the major holiday shopping season, great news for business owners. What does this mean for us in 2010 as we all look for new ways in order to make our websites search friendly at the same time focus on user experience and higher conversions?
Well we shall see, most have already seen some of Google's cool new features such as live search in the results, pulling from Twitter and Facebook postings. Google now can index and show results in real-time, making it the fasted search engine on the internet not to say that MSN and Yahoo are trying to keep up with their engines. So where does a business owner start?
Additional Steps
Based on Google’s public statements, most notably from Matt Cutts, you should review pages in three areas:
- Google wants it searches to be faster, and wants the pages it ranks to be fast, too. Accordingly, how fast pages load will now be a consideration as it ranks pages. Severs count, but you should also make sure your pages are designed effectively. Pay attention to excessive Flash presentations or scripts that are poorly written.
- Original content, or existing content packaged in an original way, will be rewarded. Aggregating a large amount of content, with little or no relation to your business, and placing it on a site may be penalized going forward.
- Don’t ignore search engine optimization (SEO) basics such as proper keywords, meta tags and good links. Take advantage of every tool that will legitimately increase your page rankings.
Google has additional resources, including SEO tips and a downloadable starter guide.
The Importance of Servers
As detailed in the section below, your business may already have the resources to adjust to the changes. But as a small or medium business, one consideration may put you at a disadvantage and that may just be your servers. Google will reward pages that load fast, and large companies can simply purchase a bigger and faster pipe if they need to. Bummer for the small companies that host on shared servers and don't have the resources to keep up with the internet giants. However their are many solutions such as Godaddy and other hosting companies that do well for site owners, however if you need to tweek something within your Linux or Windows server settings you are limited because of that magic word called "shared servers" ..
Yes, Godaddy and other hosting companies have options for you as they sell what is called dedicated servers. The issue I see with that is each company now has to understand how to manage a server not only should they need to understand what type of equipment that company is using such as the type of server the dedicated box is being stored on.
The big question I had to ask myself as a owner of many websites is:
- What type of server is my site hosted on?
- If the server was to crash, do I have a backup?
- If I need more power or bandwidth what is that going to require?
- What security measures is the hosting company taking to ensure my companies safety?
However, I currently have my websites over at NetStandard Inc. a local Kansas City data center located just off I-35 and Lamar. I currently am employed there however I feel they could help you level the playing field. Transitioning from dedicated servers to virtual servers residing in a data center can ensure not only that you can sleep better at night instead of worrying about just your rankings but get you the right tools to accomplish a complete and solid goal for your business needs.
Sure there are tons of hosting providers around the world however the one thing that stands out is their customer service and ability to only offer you what you need and help keep your company safe and online, they can configure your servers in a virtual environment so that they are at maximum speed and efficiency. This makes good business sense, but is now an imperative with Google Caffeine.
This is just one benefit of virtualization, which also can eliminate server purchases, reduce ongoing technology costs and decrease energy usage, which helps the environment and saves you money.
One of the things I see out of this update is that it opens eyes to things we take for granted, such as when we come in to work we expect to be able to flip the light switch on and have our lights on and begin our business day. The same thing goes for technology, we expect that to run and do the same thing, however sometimes we may take that for granted and it is always good to be prepared.
The other thing I see is that Google has yes upgraded their technology but is allowing us as business owners the opportunity to start to better our side of things. As they are always giving us the tools to be successful such as new FireFox Plugins you can download and check your speed, as well Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics helping us understand our traffic and how to make better decisions as we grow.
If you look at Google's search model, you will see that they want to deliver the best results for visitors on their website with accurate feedback to the query you typed into the search bar. I see Google as getting better at this every year however as we know being within the first 10 results is very important when going after organic growth opportunities. So if you provide a true quality experience for your customer and have good content for them along with that visitor experience you are already ahead of the game.
