What do we need to know and do about Google Caffeine?

It’s been over half a year since the announcement of Google Caffeine, the newer, more streamlined version of the current Google search engine; but still there’s no sign of it. Whether it has already been rolled out or not, we can’t know for sure and so far Google has gone quiet on the matter. Personally, I think they’re already pushing it out little by little; it makes more sense to. Either way, here is the low-down on Google Caffeine.

As more and more websites are published online, the need for more relevant, accurate results for users is paramount; this has always been Google’s main aim.

Taken directly from the Official Google Webmaster Blog, they explain

It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.

Now, this may not mean a lot to the general user. In fact, most users will not see a difference in search results or the way that Google Caffeine functions – but what are the implications for web developers and SEOs? The main emphasis it seems, is on producing faster results for the user that is more accurate and complete in every way possible.

Page speed will be be high on the list of important factors that will affect ranking for Google Caffeine. This means the speed of which the pages load for the user. The faster they load the better, this improves not only the usability of the site, but will help the site’s search ranking . Several factors that will affect page speed is the code it is written in, type and size of images used and domain hosting.

You can ensure your pages load quicker by following some simple steps:

• Make sure your code is as clean and valid as possible; W3C offer a free validation tool for both HTML and CSS which are great for checking and correcting errors in your code.
• Keep styling and Javascript externalised or to a minimum to lower code to text ratio; search engine crawlers favour cleaner code and smaller file sizes and can crawl more efficiently.
• Choose web optimised, fast loading JPG and GIF over slower, heavy PNG image format.
• By hosting your site in the same country as your desired user group, you can be sure your pages load quicker while  geo-targeting your site at the same time.

Indexing speed will increase as Google crawls and indexes more pages at a faster rate. This means fresh, unique content is more important than ever as Google crawls for the most relevant and up to date information to provide the user with.

What Google are talking about in terms of accuracy is whether websites can match up the keywords that a user is searching for with accurate content. The important thing here is making sure you’re using the right keywords to target your site’s pages. Google Caffeine is interested in user’s behaviour when they land on a page, not just what sites they click on. If you’ve targeted the keywords accurately, you’ll help to maximise the conversion ability of your site.

In terms of comprehensiveness, Google will rank sites on how extensive and thorough the information they provide to the user is. This is to say that your site should cover all aspects of your market niche – another reason for building new pages on your site that target your chosen keywords.

The good news for older domains is that Google will continue to favour older sites with lots of pages, as they are seen as more authoritative. Another bonus is domains with keywords, in particular exact matching domains. www.seo-julie.co.uk should theoritically always rank higher for the keyword search term ‘seo julie’ over other domains.

Another update we will be seeing is the mixture of resources displayed in the search engine results pages, or ‘blended search results’. We’ll be seeing a lot more images and videos, social media updates from the likes of MySpace, Facebook updates and Twitter feeds. Watch this space.