Google’s Caffeine and Super Caffeine Updates

Google recently rolled out their search engine with the Caffeine update (January 2010).  With this update came a lot of different changes.  First, Google switched to all Ajax results which made the search results speed much faster.  The new change was classified as a backend update only, but the reality was something else.  The second thing that happened was personalized search results even without being logged in.  That’s fine, there’s a link I can turn off the personalized results with at the top.  Then came Super Caffeine.

With the Super Caffeine update (April 2010) was that personalized search results started getting served regardless of whether or not you’re logged in to Google or not.  This change takes into account your recent search activity, along with sites that you have recently visited, and serves up results based on your preferences.  Sounds good right?  Not so fast.  That’s kind of creepy.  Now I need to go get my tin foil hat and armadillo helmet.

With the Super Caffeine update, you can no longer turn off personalized results.  With the regular Caffeine there was a link at the top of the results to turn off the personalization, but that is no more.  So now your search results for something like, “restaurants”, will now show local sites along with previously viewed sites.  It’s very quirky and you don’t always see these results.  What’s even more worrying is that you don’t really know that it’s different unless you know what was there before.  So for an SEO, what this does, is make ranking reports no longer completely accurate.  Rankings are no longer static (nor have they been for a while).  I didn’t really notice the change until I tried to run some ranking reports for some clients.  The results were very skewed and slightly different than what they were seeing.  Yeah, that’s not good.

Google throws us a bone – Google Webmaster Tools Update

Last week, April 16th or so, Google updated their much beloved Webmaster Tools, more specifically, the Top Search Queries section.  In the past, the top search queries showed you your top 100 keywords that your site was ranking for and the position.  It was an interesting tool, but really didn’t do much for data.  It still didn’t negate the need for a ranking report.  Now, the top search queries tool has been updated.  It still shows you the top searched keywords, but it shows you even more: impressions, click throughs, and ranking positions by keyword.  Notice I said positions.  It will now show you impressions for positions 1,2,3,4,5,6-10, Page 2, and Page 3+.  What’s more, you will see that each keyword will have multiple positions.

The new impressions and click-through that was presented confirmed a long standing suspicion that I’ve had, Google is calculating click-throughs, traffic, and possibly time on site metrics into the algorithm for ranking purposes.  They track it for paid search so, why not for organic results.

Conclusion

While these changes to Google Caffeine and Super Caffeine are nothing we haven’t been seeing for months now, they will definitely impact the way we look at the search results and rankings.  I will still run ranking reports and use them to define the strategy, I will do so with a grain of salt and be sure to tell my clients that rankings may vary.  With the new Top Search Results data, I think we are going to see an emergence of click-through and conversion optimization.  I think many smart SEO’s will keep track of this and create new ways to tweak titles and meta descriptions that will not only rank well, but also attract users.

I think SEO is far from being dead and will continue to be in demand.  The industry is definitely changing with every algorithm update and every social media flavor of the week that rolls out.  Facebook is soooo last year.  Hello Twitter and FourSquare!  Ignore your site’s SEO if you want to, but you will soon see your competitors laughing all the way to the bank.