The Google Caffeine Index Goes Live

Last night, Google announced that its much-anticipated index upgrade is now complete.  The new update, nicknamed "caffeine" should be able to index new information as soon as it is found by the Google robots.   The following image shows how this index works differently than the previous one.

The old index took about two weeks to update the most important websites (bottom layer).  Other websites that were more static and less visited would take much longer to be updated in the Google index.  The caffeine index continuously adds fresh content, making new information searchable almost immediately.  Websites that constantly add fresh content stand to benefit from the new index.  For more information on the Google search engine works, check out the video clip on the Church Web Coach blog.

Other changes to Google search that have been implemented over past 7 months will affect how some websites appear on search result pages.   There are several new factors that impact the ranking of websites such as page load time and the use of long-tail keywords.  Webmasters should have an SEO checkup and update their search marketing strategy in order make sure that they are not adversely affected by these changes.