tedster - 7:06 pm on Aug 19, 2009 (gmt 0)

The way I hear Google on this is that they don't intend Caffeine to affect results - but they certainly know that it might. That's why Matt Cutts asked for feedback about the discrepancies webmasters might see in the search results.

Thanks for the data on this. The changing total number of results is particularly interesting, i think, because it is more reflective of an infrastructure change. We do need to remember, however, that the number reported is only a rough estimate. Still, there may be some clues in there.