Google’s New Algorithm Update Impacts 35% of Searches

I have just had my Caffeine update and I liked it…

Yes Google has rolled out a BIG new search engine algorithm. This one is all about 'freshness'. Google claiming that roughly 35% of search results will be affected by these recent changes.

Google’s New Algorithm Update Impacts 35% of Searches

I have just had my Caffeine update and I liked it…

Yes Google has rolled out a BIG new search engine algorithm. This one is all about 'freshness'. Google claiming that roughly 35% of search results will be affected by these recent changes.

The thinking behind the update is to show relevant content which in some cases is minutes old. This is an extension of work started last year with Caffeine. Caffeine was the new infrastructure i.e. a new indexing system, allowing them the capacity to crawl / index content on an enormous scale, quickly. This latest change is the follow on step changing the algorithm to show fresher results, fresher than ever before.  

To put this into prospective, this is significantly larger than Google Panda update (over a series of months) which impacted on around 12% of the searches conducted.

So what type of searches will it improve?

Trending topics and recent events

Recent times have show trending topics, very topical… Finding information that is in the news, up to the minute product information and events will see an improvement in the relevant search results returned and those sites that provide recent high quality content will Rank.

Regularly recurring events

Those events that take place on a regularly recurring basis, like elections, business events, conferences will index. In fact, it is implied (by Google) that your more likely to get these in your search rather than an event that happened twenty years ago.

Sites that have frequent updates

Searching sites that have information that changes frequently, but not those focusing on the latest trending topic will stand a chance of returning more up-to-date information.

Freshness in the algorithm is not new, and suggestions to this being a factor data back to 2007. However, the Caffeine update has made this a real possibility.  

I imagine freshness has been given additional weight in the overall factor. This is a big change and I think that over the coming weeks and months existing sites occupying key Google real-estate could be up for a little movement. I say this as I can still see sites with old content ranking higher than those with newer content.

I can see a few potential downsides… How is Freshness going to be measured? So when will the clock start. It could be when the page is found, how about date it was posted or even modified? I can see Freshness spam where content is repeatedly posted or a freshness race in an effort to post constant new articles. Therefore it is possible that freshness could be rewarding light poor, regurgitated content.

You can see this starting to take shape on recent trending topics such as a search for the 'iphone 4s'.

 Don’t be fooled this is a significant sea change if only that the information Google can manipulate in a reduced amount of time.

In addition it also seems that the update is rendering java which could allow comments made by Facebook indexed via Google.