Google Now Indexing With Caffeine Boost

It's been talked about for a while now, but it seems that the latest post to the Google Webmaster Central Blog signals the complete rollout of Google's new-fangled indexing system: Caffeine.

We saw how changes to how Google returned search listings for long-tail keywords in the 'mayday' update, but this introduction of the Caffeine system shouldn't create similar waves. It's not a rankings change like the mayday update, this is an indexing change.

So what is indexing?

Indexing is the process of evaluating what is on the pages that they return to users when a search is performed. They use 'spiders' to 'crawl' the web, following links and reporting back the content of the pages they find. Usefully Google pointed a camera at super-search-expert Matt Cutts while he explained the process (though it kind of looks like he's 'doing the robot' in the image below):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNHR6IQJGZs[/youtube]

Google describe their old index as having a number of layers, some of these layers were replaced quickly, while other layers had to wait a couple of weeks before being refreshed. As the entire web was analyzed each time the lag between a page being found and then it being available to search could be significant.

So why is the new Caffeine system better?

The new Caffeine system has streamlined this process by separating the web into smaller portions and continually evaluating them. This means that when new info and new pages are found they can be added a lot quicker to the index, making the information returned to users 'fresher'.

Old indexing system Vs. Caffeine (Image courtesy of Google)

No system rollout would be complete without a few needlessly impressive facts, and Caffeine is no exception. For example, did you know that it evaluates hundreds of thousands of pages every second? And if that were represented as a pile of paper then it would grow 3 miles taller every second? You did? Hmm, well guessed.

More information can be found on the ever information Webmaster Central Blog.

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