Even with the public testing and feedback there is still some mystery surrounding how far this new indexing system will go- will it be limited to search, or will it be applied across all of the Google online structure? For, now we don’t have those answers but we do know what Caffeine is and how it will change (or not change) your search results. 

Google has stressed the fact that most users (i.e regular users) won’t notice any major differences- even though these changes are major (MAJOR). In fact, Caffeine basically is  a complete and total re-write of Google’s indexing system. The motivation behind these changes is to give the searcher, — power or regular, —  a much better overall search experience. Caffeine will give you faster, more accurate, and more comprehensive results- at least those are the goals. 

If you go to www2.sandbox.google.com and give Caffeine a spin (like I did)  you will notice some of these goals have already been met. I entered “Nehmedia” (of course) as my search term and my results returned within .05 seconds- I also tested this on Decaf Google (aka www.google.com) and my results were returned in .08 seconds. I also tried a more frequently searched term “Shoes;” Caffeine returned the results in .18 seconds and Decaf Google returned my results in .23. Conclusion: Caffeine is faster than the Google we use today. 

Another interesting aspect of Google Caffeine is that this new indexing system is going to make your time from launch to index much quicker,.Meaning: the time between when you submit a document to be indexed and the time it is made searchable should be much shorter- which is pretty fantastic for those of us in SEO.

Also very important to note from the SEO standpoint is that it seems (to me at least) that a lot more emphasis is going to be put on keywords. The top results have the exact words you searched for and in the order you searched them in.

More emphasis is also put on recent activity and content. When I searched my name on Caffeine, the Facebook results were at the top. In Decaf Google, the top results were a mix of articles containing my name. I can only deduce from this that websites with more recent activity are pushed to the top of the results. This could have a huge impact on SEO; if we want our clients websites to be highly ranked we are going to need to regularly add content or make changes to the site. Caffeine will also return more search results than normal Google so your search becomes more comprehensive- they are making it very hard not to find what you are looking for. News is changing as well. Caffeine focuses on real-time updates and has set in place an algorithm to make sure that as news is updated, so are you. 

Many people have been wondering what set Caffeine into motion and a lot of whispers (and yells in some cases) have been speculating that it was the recent Yahoo-Microsoft merger. Not so, says Matt Cutts (and he would know). In fact, according to Cutts, Caffeine has been in the works for months and the timing is coincidence.

I believe him. It would have been nothing short of a miracle for engineers and technologists to have created this as a reaction to BingHoo (or whatever you want to call it) and have it up and ready for testing so quickly. Pretty impossible, even for Google. Nevertheless, it is competition- and fierce competition at that. Even if it wasn’t meant as an answer to the merger, it is an answer to it. 

For regular searchers, Caffeine won’t mean too much of a difference in results. As Cutts said, the changes are “primarily under the hood”.  Google will still return relevant results- just faster and more comprehensive results. Power searchers and those in the “know” will notice some significant changes though, and SEO needs to take note of them because it will effect our methods and strategies.

Matt Cutts blog: http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

Because long-tail keywords are so specific and geared toward a small group of searchers, you have a much much better chance of being the top-ranked website for those terms. Achieving the top rank for a keyword gives you a major advantage over your competitors. Most people click on the first site that comes up in search- and if that site is yours- then you have the best chance of making a searcher a customer. Another benefit of long-tail keywords is the specificity of the term, because it is so targeted the searcher was most likely looking for exactly what you offer. Take a clothing boutique for example. While the owners of the site might be tempted to only target keywords such as “dresses” or “designer jeans,” it will likely be difficult for their site to compete with large internet retailers for search visibility on those terms. On the other hand, if the owners of the boutique target long-tail keywords such as ” Zac Posen cocktail dress”  or ” Dark denim skinny leg jeans” then they are much more likely not only to rank highly but also to receive visits to their site from customers actually looking to purchase what they are offering. Long-tail keywords are much more likely to convert into a sale than short-tail due to the specific nature of the term. 

Since you will be targeting such detailed terms, you will have to create more pages to cover all the different variations. In general, search engines (read Google) are rather fond of websites with many pages due to the fact these websites are more likely to be reputable and knowledgeable. They give the search engine spiders plenty to read and rank, and search engines like that. It never hurts a website to employ methods that search engines respond well to and they respond very well to long-tail keywords.

In the end, it’s a matter or high search volumes without conversion/sales (short-tail keywords), or lower search volumes that translate into revenue (long-tail keywords). I’ll have the revenue, please.

There are some who would have you believe that all top ranked sites cheat in order to be number one. This couldn’t be farther from the truth. Websites with top ranking are at the top because they employ expert SEO companies that use Search Optimization Software. They have optimized keywords, and quality content- that is why they are highly ranked. Be this as it may, there are still plenty of people trying to cheat the system. Some use masked keywords to achieve a (very) short term ranking. Masked keywords are words that you have incorporated into your website that don’t actually have any relevance to what the site is actually about. Some instances of this are using celebrity names, political events, or top news headlines in order to lure people to your site. This will probably work for a very short while, but all those customers visiting the site weren’t actually looking for it in the first place and were only attracted to it because of misleading keywords- they will leave your site immediately and never return. However, losing face with customers will be the least of your worries, because when a Search Engine discovers you have been cheating them, they will ban your site from all search, permanently.

Another popular method of scamming (and it is a scam) Search Engines is using noscript tags to hide content that the customer doesn’t see but the Search Engines do. Noscript tags are supposed to be used for alternate content in the event your site content doesn’t appear or a script is not executed. Instead of properly using noscript tags some websites fill them with high ranking keywords/content that has absolutely nothing to do with their site. The Search Engines spiderbots read this content and assign the site a high rank- at first- it doesn’t take long for the bots to recognize the farce and immediately erase the website from memory. Let me stress there is no coming back from this, no excuse in the world will save you from being banned. If you cheat a Search Engine, they will enforce the harshest of consequences- without asking questions.

The lesson? Do not even attempt to fool a Search Engine. You won’t ever be able to outsmart them and the repercussions could be devastating to your business.