What do you think of caffeinated verus decaffeinated Google?

[MichaelCorfman]

Google announced last week on August 10th that it will be rolling out a new search algorithm code-named caffeine. So, Google using the current search algorithm has been dubbed "decaffeinated" and Google using the new search algorithm has been dubbed "caffeinated." You can see the google Webmaster Central Blog announcement here: googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/08/help-test-some-next-generation.html.

According to Google "For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google's web search. It's the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits "under the hood" of Google's search engine, which means that most users won't notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we're opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

"Some parts of this system aren't completely finished yet, so we'd welcome feedback on any issues you see. We invite you to visit the web developer preview of Google's new infrastructure at www2.sandbox.google.com/ and try searches there.

"Right now, we only want feedback on the differences between Google's current search results and our new system. We're also interested in higher-level feedback ("These types of sites seem to rank better or worse in the new system") in addition to "This specific site should or shouldn't rank for this query." Engineers will be reading the feedback, but we won't have the cycles to send replies.

"Here's how to give us feedback: Do a search at www2.sandbox.google.com/ and look on the search results page for a link at the bottom of the page that says "Dissatisfied? Help us improve." Click on that link, type your feedback in the text box and then include the word caffeine somewhere in the text box. Thanks in advance for your feedback!"

So, for this week's question I thought it was worth asking GPWA webmasers if they have tried out the new Google search algorithm, and if they have, whether they like the results of the current encarnation of the new caffeinated Google algorithm better or worse than the existing decaffeinated Google algorithm. And be sure to share your thoughts about how results differ between the two algorithms from your perspective for search terms that matter to you.

Michael

[Doolally]

I've searched for a few terms that my sites rank for and to be honest, I can't see much difference in the results from the live version of Google.

Of course, now I've said that everyone will probably disagree!

[thepokerkeep]

Not seeing much difference either TBH - what am I missing?

[oc+]

Have done about 10 searches on this and there is not much difference at all, 1 or 2 places here and there.

Mind you, most of us on here have good sites and there is a lot of rubbish that usually shows in pages 2-5 that seems to have been filtered.

[Nandakishore]

I have voted for 'somewhat better' although I actually mean 'somewhat different'. I can't judge yet if the results are better. I tested with few keywords and found that this new SE delivers more results. e.g. I used 'online games' and found 130 million results against 45 million using the normal SE. But that doesn't mean much. To really test the quality, it is necessary to compare e.g. the top 10 retrieved by both SEs.

[Anthony]

Not much difference. Not like the dramatic change from msn to bing.

[lots0]

To get a good idea of the comparison between the two you might want to try this.

http://www.comparegoogle.com/

You should also be aware that caffeine is a still very very much a work in progress.
The caffeine algo is being twisted, stretched, pushed, pulled and tweaked on a constant basis right now.

As far as I can tell caffeine's biggest change is in the parsing of incoming link text.


LOL---- "secret project" my butt... Everybody knew about it... The only 'secret' was when google was going to go public with this new algo and what it was going to be called.

[PokerChipsGalaxy.com]

For the most part my keyword search's have stayed the same or have moved up a few spots on the first page. However, why is Google not placing paid listings to test as well?

[lots0]

... why is Google not placing paid listings to test as well?

The paid listings are completely separate from the general search results.
They do test the paid listings every day...