Search Engines are like sharks: If they stop moving, they die.
Okay, I’m not even sure if that’s really true about sharks. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not. But still, it is true about search engines, in that they have to keep innovating and updating, if for nothing else to stay ahead of spammers. Google, as the king of search engines, obviously has been doing that constantly throughout the years. Some of the changes are noticeable, but most are subtle tweaks on a rolling basis.
But today, the company has begun testing a new engine for its search product that’s a big enough change that it felt compelled to let the world know about it. Codenamed “Caffeine”, it promises to “push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”
The test, available here: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/, really doesn’t look any different at first glance. And Google notes as much, saying that these changes are primarily under the hood. When you hear that, most people will probably assume this means speed in showing results.
So is it any faster? It’s hard to tell. Most results on Google are already so fast, that shaving a nanosecond here or there hardly seems to matter. By Google’s own counter (which show up along the top of every Google result page next to the number of results), the results are mixed. Sometimes Caffeine wins, sometimes regular old Google wins.
But reading Google’s statement, it seems that by “indexing speed” they may mean the speed at which they index pages behind the scenes, putting them in the results. It’s difficult to test that immediately, it seems like something you may start to notice over time as content comes in faster.
One thing I do notice is that across the board, Caffeine seems to have more results in its index than regular Google does. But it’s hard to tell if that really matters since most people never get to the end of the millions of results for items (and for most, in fact, you can’t).
In terms of actual results, they seem to be mostly the same. Doing the same search on each, a few results change positions, and some different ones appear, but it’s largely the same for the words I tested.
Google’s Matt Cutts worked on the project and has a Q&A on his own blog that is interesting. Here’s my favorite part:
Q: Is this Caffeine Update because of Company X or Y is doing Z?
A: Nope. I love competition in search and want lots of it, but this change has been in the works for months. I think the best way for Google to do well in search is to continue what we’ve done for the last decade or so: focus relentlessly on pushing our search quality forward. Nobody cares more about search than Google, and I don’t think we’ll ever stop trying to improve.
To me that brings to mind two companies immediately: Twitter and Bing. Those are the two services doing the most interesting things around search right now that could potentially challenge Google. But the Google team claims it has been working on this project in secret for the past “several months,” so if you believe that, it stands to reason that this at least probably isn’t a direct response to Bing, which is newer.
And I like that answer. Too many companies focus on directly going after competitors by doing exactly what they’re doing, or attempting to. With Caffeine, it doesn’t appear Google is trying to do that, but instead is just trying to improve what it already does well. Of course, you can have that luxury when you’re the king.
I do wonder though if Google doesn’t do anything to change the appearance of its results, even if those changes are meaningless (adding more pictures, etc), if users won’t perceive that its rivals are out-maneuvering it. Still, better results cannot hurt, especially as some tests suggest that the rivals may be catching up to Google in that regard.
Google is doing this public test now to get feedback from users, presumably before deploying it into wide release on google.com.
[photo: flickr/mararie]
That is true about sharks, they need oxygen.
They stop moving, they die.
But I think they can sleep in currents, etc…
Sharks swim in their sleep (at least some species).
http://en.wikip...iki/Shark#Sleep
As for Google… good for them! I would personally keep the minimal pre web 2.0 design and just focus on the functionality and what’s “under the hood”.
ha, love the shark info guys. glad you have been watching your shark week.
Should’ve used the bicycle metaphor instead. Easier to explain.
Enough about sharks, the article is about search engine innovation.
“I do wonder though if Google doesn’t do anything to change the appearance of its results, even if those changes are meaningless (adding more pictures, etc), if users won’t perceive that its rivals are out-maneuvering it. ”
I am not sure I agree. But I do share the view that there is still a lot of innovation to be had in search both at the back end and at the interface layer.
Yauba http://www.yauba.com for example takes a very different approach which I really like, which is to consolidate the various search results.
Some shark species can. Some can’t, depends on the strength of their gills, or if they’re capable of settling in fast flowing water.
http://www.flmn...sics.html#sleep
There is photographic evidence of sleeping Caribbean sharks, for example, http://www.clas...r_scharfer.html
http://www.shar...ark%20Facts.pdf
excellent.
Great Whites cannot. Someone here accidentally caught a 400lb Great White in his crap pot. it couldn’t get water through it’s gills, and thus drowned.
Must have been an interesting find when you’re just looking for crabs.
Not all sharks will die. BTW, I saw one not dying and not moving once, in the aquarium.
Depends on the shark. There are sharks that rest on the bottom of the ocean floor waiting for food to swim past or near them. It’s like saying “humans need to continuously talk, or else their brains stop working.” While, there is a large population where this holds true, there are definitely people who can think with their mouths closed.
Looks interesting, I would be keeping an eye out for a new search engine, which is rumored to be coming out in the next week to two. From my understanding the guys who are behind this new search engine, where the guys who did Twitoosearch.com which I was a huge fan, sadly they closed that due to DDOS attacks, and lack of funding.
I am not sure what new technology they are using but they are saying that it will change the way we thought search was done.
I got my hands on there API which is interesting if they are doing Real Time Search email me for a copy.
>they are saying that it will change the way we thought search was done.
That’s a good one. It won’t change search, it won’t change our way of thinking, it will just change our past thoughts about search.
the heat is ON!!
If the recent BING/Twitter success hadn’t happened, I doubt GOOG would have ever done a blog on such changes..
that’s an interesting point. while they may have been working on them for a long time. would they have blogged about it?
I’m thinking they wouldn’t have announced it for a couple more months if Bing hadn’t existed, and not to mention but maybe facebook’s announcement of acquiring Friendfeed and going after real-time search was the final need for the push into announcing this “secret” project?
Rahul, it was time to ask for feedback either way. We would have put out the call regardless of other events in the search space.
Summer is a great time to roll out new search infrastructure. More people are away from their computers, which means 1) there’s extra computing capacity to try new things and 2) you can tweak and tune before tons of people come back and start searching in earnest as school ramps up.
Wow, bit of a late reply now, but thanks for the information Matt. I’ve been following you on Friendfeed for some time now, so I figured you would chime in on the issue yourself at some point. Thanks!
Yay my blog moves up from 5th to 1st when I search my name on the “new” Google. I like it already!
yeah, what percentage of people tested it with a vanity search, I wonder? i did. I bet like 90%.
Guilty. And we ranked higher as well. Bring on the Caffeine!
bing on the caffeine huh
my name was the first search I tried.
Looks like some of the new algorithms are favoring blogs and sites that are a little bit more personal than generic Facebook name searches… Or maybe they are just starting to respect more SEO tactics? Who knows but it’s looking pretty solid in the vanity search end of things.
maybe that means they have more fresh content on the new engine? did your online activity reach a peak recently?
“Too many companies focus on directly going after competitors by doing exactly what they’re doing, or attempting to.”
that would be why the zune is a failure…
Smart companies do both… see you have to look at it from the users eyes not the engineers. Users will generally look to a couple websites as the example all others follow. As a CEO you must make sure your site mimics the most important functionality playing off the fact we learn in patterns and thus by keeping with the pattern of popular sites it not only makes your site seem easier to use but it seems more legit to the user.. the sites that really take off they then step it up and add something new and exciting..
I saw quite a few less search results in my search for “super test”. One thing I did notice, however, was the lack of sponsored links on Caffeine, which isn’t surprising.
Well, am not sure if minor changes in Google would matter, but increasing the indexing speed does matter. It directly corresponds to getting one step closer to indexing the real-time contents. So, that would mean it directly competes with Twitter and likes. Well, that’s gonna be a hard fight. Instead, Google should acquire innovative startups in this space. I would vote for http://www.boilingpage.com that has several different verticals and shows what’s hot among people. Their technology appears to be smart to me. My addiction specifically is with http://books.boilingpage.com and http://games.boilingpage.com
I set up a quick frame thing to compare results side by side
http://www.cale...s/caffeine.html
Works best on big monitors.
I love this part as King has the luxury of trying out new things. This has always been the best part about Google they compete with them self. This change is also good, at-least for the searches I tried out. I would keenly wait for them to officially announce its launch.
I think adding images to the search would also boost the product launch. For me the new innovation is thumbs up.
Sonal Maheshwari
USourceIT your single source for all IT needs
While diving I’ve seen nurse sharks, horn sharks, swell sharks, and angel sharks resting motionless on the bottom. I think these sharks can move their gills.
There are many other sharks that cannot mover their gills on their on and have to force water through them with some external force… so they usually have to keep swimming.
What’s google?
it’s a type of a search engine
What’s a search engine?
It’s a type of Google.
+1
har har
lol.
I just wrote a Firefox search plugin for people who anyone who wants to make this their default search for a while:
http://www.onli...sandbox-plugin/
Sharks are cool!
Whole story could have been written in couple of sentences. Very verbose for nothing.
you mean in 140 characters. (MG wrote this, remember
)
Caffeine is noticeably faster on my pc.
No matter how many times Google spends upgrading their Search Engine in the future, they will never change the display of what it is that made the Company what it is today – Sponsored Links.
why bite the hand that gives you 98% of your food?
I’ve tested it for 2 adys now, And it is really much better.
I see less spam and speed is twice faster (Doubt it can be faster than that!).
There are also mixed-up results for some hard term and google don’t know what to give you, The new version quite handle it fine with related results..
I really like it, I’ve found out many spam websites from my niche (real-estate) are kinda gone..
I didn’t notice any speed differences, but I do think that overall it did a better job of bringing the sites I felt were important higher up in the rankings. I spent about an hour testing the new Google engine side by side with the current engine and in almost every situation the new engine ranked the results better for me.
Marc
The new search engine ranked my agency’s website better than with the old version. We also beefed up our internet presence management efforts, which probably also contributed to the better ranking. More at http://domusinc...ne-changes.html
This version of Google search should be added to that Search Engine Blind Test.
(but Google already gets this info from their click logs)
From initial keyword search testing, Caffeine does has faster response time and more relevant result sets.
e.g. Search on “NASA Constellation”
Caffeine has response time of 0.07 sec.
Regular Google.com has response time of 0.12 sec.
NASA Constellation results sets seems more relevant using Caffeine.
BingYahoo! Who?
Good job Googley, Googley Google. To much caffeine
Using chrome on ubuntu, caffeine returns results noticeably faster. I wonder if this is because caffiene is not rendering any sponsored links (i.e., the extra time to determine and render ads).
When searching for “california prison statistics”, I get 437,000 on legacy google.com, and 3,470,000 on caffiene. That’s a big difference, but still the top results are almost all the same and slightly re-ordered.
Interesting choice for a test search.
This is the reason i set it to my default search for now; no sponsored links, no adds
I like it already!
It is a war against all competitors. Google is out to get them! Bing, Twitter, Real Time Search – all should bow down to Google.
Red Bull is nasty anyway hahaha
i heart google
The index speed does seem to be faster. Another noticeable change is, when running it against a site I recently updated, it seems to report the last time the site was updated in the results itself if it happens to be < 24 hours old (from what I’ve seen so far. Maybe more).
Another question is whether this faster indexing speed is actually predictive of what will happen for the results of a particular keyword. For example, it seems to pull in more “universal” results more quickly (such as video and images). I wonder if we can then expect to see these results come into the normal google results within the next few weeks?
It would be nice to know when and how often they plan on exporting this test index into the current one
haha, that first line was hysterical. I just had to write that before going on.
Back to post…
“Or maybe they are just starting to respect more SEO tactics?”
I hope not! May they die a painful death!
Since when a better promoted result is better than a more relevant one?
Google should really work more on penalizing SEO than on speed. I miss the times when I could hit the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button and get a good result, when it was enough to browse the first page of the results to get what you wanted. Now, most of the times my results start way beyond page 2.
I’ve noticed Google indexing going into overdrive recently.
The results are still easily manipulated with backlinks. Guess who is #1 for “click here”
They’re definitely feeling a bit threatened by bing.
i tried a search and it took 21 sec with caffeine with 200 000 results and on google it took 9 seconds with 300 000 results.
good on google always working on search.
only on this website do i get conversations about sharks and tech.
thanks to matt for letting us know what the team is up to.
i think i’m with andrew on this.
If anyone can think of a better use of the domain http://www.googlecaffeine.com let me know
Wow, I can’t believe how blind people still are, maybe it’s just me, but my stomach turns and I feel sick when I search the same keywords that I do on Google on other SE such is Bing and Ask, and find such bad results on those other engines.
Is Bing going to challenge Google hardly their search results still suck and Ask is getting worse.
Google is the king and will always be the king of SE, I don’t think anyone can beat the SE results in speed and accuracy.
Bing is a joke Ask is waste and Yahoo is hanging by a thread.
http://www2.san...oq=&aqi=g10
ouch, first result is BING TRAVELS
Google moves ahead of the pack yet again!, they are just so more relevant in their search engine
DOES ANYONE KNOW WHEN CAFFEINE WILL OFICIALLY BEGUIN???