AlyssaS - 7:26 pm on Oct 1, 2009 (gmt 0)

Rather than speculating in general, it might be worth people checking out their own site to make sure everything is in order.

Here's the test url for Google Caffeine:

[www2.sandbox.google.com...]

First use the site operator to make sure all the pages of your site are indexed in the new engine. Then put in the urls of your backlinks to make sure they are there too. And then you can set up a spreadsheet to compare rankings between the old engine and caffeine engine for your main keywords.

Of course you can't check everything - my hunch is that Caffeine will be good for long-tails if your site has a lot of content - but till someone actually searches for these terms and they come up in my analytics, I can't be sure.

For most people their rankings should be exactly the same. But if you are one of those affected, at least you have time to work out why and attempt to fix it.

IMO Google wants people to check their sites like this - that's why they've given us access to Caffeine ahead of time. They want to avoid the shock and controversy that Big daddy provoked.

Anyone shocked by the time Caffeine rolls out has only themselves to blame for not checking things out beforehand.