Google Caffeine Update - Affecting Your SEO Positioning

Posted on August 26, 2009
Google Updates, Toronto Marketing Consultant, Toronto Online Consulting, Toronto SEO Consulting |

Google Caffeine Update

Seems Google is back at it with the new update under development called Caffeine. For those that have been in SEO for awhile you will remember the “Big Daddy “ update that happened back in 2005. According to Matt Cutts, this is along the same vain of overhaul.

Big Daddy really hurt allot of individuals and companies marketing with SEO and clearly called for a revamping of your SEO strategy. Seems “Caffeine” will pull the same need for revisions to the SEO professional community.

In the past algorithms changed to reflect off page factors, that being, an algorithm looking to deem you as an authority site with other authority sites pointing back to you. When Google introduced the entertaining Page Rank theory it deemed businesses viable or not viable for end-users. Allot of companies put heavy weight to obtaining the highest “PR” possible. Now we know that Page Rank is deemed for entertainment purposes only and should not be taken literally.

But is that true?

As we look at the current database, Google is displaying in Google.com many heavy weight sites are still cutting through with extremely high page rank. The current index, probably due to the change coming, is also listing allot more Spam sites and sites that are not pertinent to the geo targeted regions of a search criteria. Certain verticals pull results that are not targeted to an end user looking for a particular service. For Example, if I’m in the USA searching for insurance, I’m finding allot of sites that are:

- .info domains, typically these domains carry no weight
- .co.uk sites which are focused on the UK, UK sites should only be showing in Google.co.uk which is not relevant to the end   user looking for insurance in the United States
- IP detection now seems out of whack on generalised search
- Search index counts that are very high

Above are just a few points that become clear very quickly.

Does Caffeine correct this issue?  Run the back to back test here:  Compare Google Caffeine Results

There are many theories in the SEO community that seem to attempt many view points:

1. Term targeting – Phrase match – Turning your keyword research and focusing on terms that have 50,000 phrase match results or less. Well, that’s works for long tails, but try telling that to a corporate client that still needs to focus on 2 phrase search terms this is the new direction to take.

2. Having end users focus more on command tools to search within Google :

- end users should search in quotation marks to define the best results
- end users should use an operator like : allintitle:
- end users should use an operator like : intext:
- end users should use an operator like : inanchor:

These search techniques are usually applied by advanced search engine users, to the general public it simply won’t happen. End users typically search based on the lowest common denominator of search practice, that being, typing your term or phrase directly into the search bar at Google with no operate commands around it.

Clearly Google is on the path to deliver the message of a more “robust” search delivery platform with the new release of MSN’s Bing.com offering. Although stated, the Caffeine update has been in the works for months.

One interesting theory that is being thrown around is that this would be a push to increase Adwords use. Knowing that this update is comparable to the 2005 “Big Daddy update” that would be the timeframe period Google revenue stream sky rocketed:

2004 – 3,189,223

2005 -  6,138,560

Until Google ports over the Caffeine results to the true index, many sites will now bare the burnt of the Google change over. Companies better have a new strategy plan in place as the next step, working with and managing your Google listings has now become more difficult

Try out the new Google Caffeine Experience : Google Caffeine Listings

Keywordspy

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