The Effects of Caffeine
The next BIG Google algorithm update one is named after a very much abused substance (legal, of course, imagine if they were to name this one cocaine instead?)
Much like the real stuff, it’s been driving some web publishers up the wall, especially those who are currently ranked high on the SERP’s for good keywords, waiting to cash on their good positions during the Holidays shopping season.
Well, they can now relax, as Google’s Matt Cutts officially announced that Caffeine won’t be implemented until after the Holidays.
Isn’t it amazing just how powerful Google has become? It is a search engine after all. As such, it was supposed to reflect what’s hot and what’s not on the web. Instead, we see once again how Google landscapes web traffic patterns rather than merely tracking them.
Not that there is much to be done about that, of course, but such “benevolent” moves by Google towards webmasters do bother me. As a surfer, I don’t want Google to give me what it considers to be “not as useful” results just out of consideration for webmasters. If you think Caffeine generates better search results, by all means, bring it on. Maybe it’s the hundreds of millions of customers you should be considering, not the thousands of merchants?
As a webmaster too, actually. You may be helping some websites, but by definition that means you’re taking traffic away from someone else. People will shop online this year – the question is which sites will be delivered by Google’s top search results to win the jackpot.
Disclaimer: I have dozens of websites and no, I haven’t tested them on the Caffeine sandbox, so I don’t know if I will be making less money or more after the roll out.
