Google's New Caffeine Search Engine - part 2

[Hissingsid]

< continued from [webmasterworld.com...] >

For my top target term there are still some differences between the Caffein sandbox and .com results. It does not affect me and looking at them dispassionately the Caffein results (subjectively) serve the user better. More of my significant real world competitors appear and less of the buy their way to the top jokers.

Cheers

Sid

[edited by: tedster at 5:52 am (utc) on Sep. 7, 2009]

[willybfriendly]

I'm now searching around the subject and there at #2 is the thread stating last post 40 minutes ago.

And quite distracting to boot. I was looking for background information on a news story this morning and all I found was pages of recent posts covering the news story.

I went to Bing...

[cangoou]

I have a feeling the "sandbox algo" (formerly known as the Caffeine algo/dataset) will become the traditional holiday dataset.

Would that mean that it will go online before the x-mas-holidays and stay or that it only will go online during the x-mas-holidays and being switched back after that?

[whitenight]

hard to say. the last 2 winters, Goog has had problems even getting the correct holiday datasets rolled in properly/completely
(although it's usually around thanksgiving or before)

So no real precedent after the holidays, aside from there being more changes in general.

[Lorel]

using a search for (keyword, keyword, City) The local business listings map is back on Caffeine but this time with only the #1 site listed in the map. Same thing shows on main Google. Otherwise not much change in either one.

[SEOPTI]

Still no indexing, I believe their supplemental index is about 30% larger since caff. started.

[subway]

So as for the status of Caffeine, can anyone confirm if the results showing on www2.sandbox.... are what's coming to the live index or already in the live index?

I've got some sites ranking one or two places higher in the sandbox so obviously am hoping those results are what's coming. Other than that I can't see a whole lot of difference between the two indexes at all.

Local results on both are pretty incomplete / inaccurate as has always been the case, although probably slightly more wacky in the sandbox results.

[trakkerguy]

{quote}the results showing on www2.sandbox.... are what's coming to the live index or already in the live index?{/quote}

Yes, that's what I keep wondering. The results are getting more similar for the keyphrases I watch. several have rolled from caffeine to the live index over the last week or two, and now match exactly.

The one big moneymaker keyphrase I am still waiting for the caffeine results to appear in the live index.

I cannot comprehend how the caffeine results could make their way to the live index as they have, but that is what I have been seeing.

[Elixir]

I am also seeing the caffeine results in the live index and its not pretty. Some of the results in the travel space look just like Florida, huge sites not relevant to the search term and the smaller sites have dissapeared. If the large sites were what I was looking for then fair enough but they are pretty much useless.

[Elixir]

Correction not caffeine results in live just the usual seasonal rubbish from Google, big brands are going to pay for Q4 adwords anyways so rank them high in organic and everybody relying on organic has to pay for Adwords. January is only two months away then we can get back to normal.

[subway]

Has anyone noticed that the number of results that the sandbox is returning is now less than the live index? Whereas a week or two ago the sandbox results returned more results than the live ones. Is this significant?

[Elixir]

Now seeing the exact same results in live as the sandbox for dozens of sites. On Tuesday they were very differnt but now almost identical.

[trakkerguy]

Elixir - Are you seeing change in live results to be like those in the caffeine sandbox, vice-versa, or what?

[Hissingsid]

Sandbox very different to live results here. If exactly the same results in US I guess this could possibly be due to UK location and different or toggle on and off UK filters on the two. ie www2.sandbox and google.com

Cheers

Sid

[Lorel]

One main thing I've noticed in last few days (keyword, Keyword, City) is that the map has been removed from both Caffeine and Live Google.

The results in both are not the same here (NW US) but similar. A few sites are bouncing around in both, but not the same sites.

[tedster]

Same here, Lorel. The Maps results are not gone for all searches, but they are appearing a lot less often - and that's a good thing, IMO.

[Elixir]

Trakker guy seeing the live results now matching what I saw in the sandbox last Tuesday checked about 450 sites.

Slight varations but no more than you would normally see. We are in the US.

[trakkerguy]

Elixir - Thanks for the report.

I am seeing more convergence between the two, but still variation of up to 10 spots for several terms I watch. Wish the live was same as sandbox.

The sandbox is relatively stable, where the live fluctuates as you normally see. I am in SF Bay area, CA.

[dertyfern]

More weird results being served up here in UK: 13 organic results for a search that involved a city name.

3 that listed results for a similar service in a city with the same name but located in Canada.

[barretire]

I wish I could make sense out of this all. A top keyword of ours we have been #1 in the sandbox for months, We bounced between 4th and 8th in the main serps. Now friday we dissapeared into oblivian in the main serps. I hope it returns as this is our bust season. Unsure what happened but sandbox is stillstable and we are still at #1

[Elixir]

Running another report tomorrow will see if they results in live continue to be the same as caffeine.

[srik79]

Sandbox is retired.....

-----------------------------
We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox.

Based on the success we've seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.

-----------------------------

[MLHmptn]

Sandbox is retired.....
-----------------------------
We appreciate all the feedback from people who searched on our Caffeine sandbox.

Based on the success we've seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience. Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.

-----------------------------

Finally! Now lets see what transpires as its deployed to the DC's.

[Badcol]

Hi everyone,

It might be common knowledge but I've just been looking for how google might test Caffeine in real time and tried www4.google.com .

All the other datacentres seem to redirect me to .co.uk, but this one is different. It also is missing any celebration logo. I'd be interested if anyone else had seen it and their theories.

Cheers

Col :-)

[edited by: tedster at 8:36 am (utc) on Nov. 10, 2009]
[edit reason] moved from another location [/edit]

[Hissingsid]

success we've seen,... positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.

This is a bit worrying, it sounds like they only listened to possitive stuff and disregarded the negative and constructive criticism.

It reminds me of a campaign I was once involved in to get the admissions policy of a school changed. The local authority went out to "public consultation". We discovered that in order to provide input you were required to get a form, complete it and send it back by a given date. I got hold of the .pdf and printed out a few hundred copies of the form and distributed this with a reply paid envelope and a leaflet explaining how important the change was to our local children and how to complete the form. Almost 100 people returned the form positively supporting the proposal to change, only four from other communities, that had something to lose, replied arguing against the change. As a result we won.

Cheers

Sid

[subway]

we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience

The sooner the better. Bring it on!

[Optimus]

Throughout the Caffeine trial, as well as the normal serps, the top 5 results for major terms in my sector, remained unchanged. It's as if google decided to grant immunity to these sites to maintain the facade of stability to most users. Their positions also did not fluctuate for allin searches, while other sites have been dancing all over the pages. Human intervention? Favoritism? Whatever...it's just plain unfair if the playing field is not level for everyone! There is no way in hell that these 5 sites could have remained constant as filters etc were tweaked, without having had some invisible "google blessing" bestowed upon them. I expect their sanctified status will remain unchanged.

Isn't is also just typical of google to place such a dismissive and passé little thank you to webmasters, when actually we would all appreciate a little more mature communication from them on this forum, or has googleguy been gagged?

[Hissingsid]

or has googleguy been gagged

No he just changed his name to Matt Cutts and got his own blog!

Cheers

Sid

[gouri]

Does anyone know how we can find which datacenter currently has the Caffeine results? Also, are the results going to look similar to what we may have seen last night before the Caffeine sandbox was retired?

[steveb]

"Soon" means there is no datacenter with Caffeine now. As soon as we get the first hint of Caffeine, they should say so.

[gouri]

I misread it. I thought they said that they have Caffeine in one datacenter and it will soon be in others.

Thanks.