Google caffeine update – is it time to freak out?

If you haven’t heard all the buzz, Google recently launched an update to its systems dubbed “Caffeine” (testing started in 2009).  The big question though is what the heck was it and do you need to worry about your website losing its rankings?

Situation Normal

Google updated it’s algorithms 350 to 400 times in 2009.  Surprised?  They actually make changes to their algorithms on average, once per day.

It’s obviously a fairly common practice at Google, but what causes people to freak out, is when Google actually names and blogs about an update.  It’s a lot like storms.  You really don’t pay any attention to them until meteorologists give them a name.

Nuts and Bolts

Google has acknowledged that the Caffeine update is primarily an infrastructure update–

“We’ve built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it’s a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you.”
-Carrie Grimes, Google Software Engineer

David Harry of the SEO Dojo puts it best when he answers what the Caffeine update means to most marketers-

“…not much really. Much like the storm that wasn’t […] there isn’t a lot to dwell on. To my thinking this is far more about the future than it is today. It is about enabling deeper processing (including ranking signals) and managing an ever growing web.”

Executive Takeaway

You should be more worried about the MayDay update.