Increased speed - No wonder they call it "Caffeine"

[BaseballGuy]

I just wrote a lengthy article for my site. Uploaded it about 5 minutes ago. Exactly 2 minutes later I get an email from Google telling me they found a new link to my site. (In the article, I linked to another relevant page in my site for reference about the subject I was speaking about).

(I'm subscribed to that thingy in Google where if they find a new link to your site, they email you about it).

It used to take upwards of 2 weeks to get that email. And apparently my post was also indexed by Google 2 minutes after I posted it. How do I know? Because I just got a couple of visits for a keyword that the article was related to.

Anyone else noticing this increased speed?

[edited by: tedster at 8:01 pm (utc) on Jan. 22, 2010]
[edit reason] addition requested by Baseballguy [/edit]

[bwnbwn]

Caffeine is realted to keeping the serps loaded with the most up to date content. New content is posted in the serps in good positions (I am sure this is related to content quality) and will move downward after that.

If you will look at what the SE's are trying to do Viva indexing twitter, facebook and so forth is keep the serps from getting stale.

This now makes good quality content more important than ever, and makes us webmasters with multiple websites work that much harder.

Fresh content is a good thing just the workload and expense of maintaining multiple sites continue to rise.

[BillyS]

I've seen the same exact thing too. Indexing is much faster than in the past. I get alerts just like you do.

[walkman]

I got some links indexed exactly 2 minutes after adding them to my index page! I was WOW-ed.

[BillyS]

I just updated my sitemap. I went to WMT and submitted the new map. In less than a minute googlebot grabbed the new sitemap. I went back to WMT and the new information was already in that tool. That's fast.

[maximillianos]

It is nice except when you have spam/abuse that gets past filters and typically gets removed by a mod. We have posts that last maybe 10 minutes on our site before a mod catches it. By that time it is already indexed. Then it sits in the index for weeks even after we remove it.

I know we can login to webmastertools and request a page removed, but most our mods (volunteers) don't have that access.

So real time indexing has it's negatives as well. Another negative example, I recently posted here about a problem with an organization slandering another group/person in an attempt to ruin their business. They were (are) posting garbage all over the web and it is filling the top ten results pretty much instantly before the poor victim has time to even realize what is going on.

[wheel]

Caffeine is realted to keeping the serps loaded with the most up to date content.

I've not been following caffiene, but here's my question. If I continually add new content, does this help my 'stale' content rank?

[bumpaw]

(I'm subscribed to that thingy in Google where if they find a new link to your site, they email you about it).

Looked around and couldn't find that. Would a link be possible?

[Swanny007]

bumpaw, it's [alerts.google.com...]

[bumpaw]

I use Google Alerts already, but never saw a feature just for finding inbound links. I guess you just set an alert for your domain name and watch for links in that.

[zeus]

up to date yes that is ok, but I also see a lot of old stuff on google, like from sites that dont have that content listed anymore, but only on google cache, thats a pain.

[classifieds]

Bumpaw, create alerts for this:

new links--> link:www.domain.com
new pages--> site:www.domain.com

-jay

[bumpaw]

Thanks jay.

[dstiles]

But be aware that they can often be stupidly incorrect.

Of the alerts I've had in the past year or so for mytown-web.co.uk most have been for sites that mention the words mytown and web separately, missing out any mention of my domain whatsoever! When I do get a valid domain the results are from spurious make-it-up-as-you-go-along whois spam sites which as like as not don't even have the hyphen.

[dailypress]

If I continually add new content, does this help my 'stale' content rank?

I dont see how it would be related so I doubt it.

[TheMadScientist]

I dont see how it would be related so I doubt it.

Because part of the determination of stale v fresh is the 'freshness' of the links to the content and the 'freshness' of the page containing the fresh link(s). You have to think of stale v fresh determinations much like PageRank... Freshness 'cascades', 'transfers' from one page to another, depending on the 'freshness' of the link and the 'freshness' of the page containing the link, which is in part, of course, determined by the 'freshness' of the links pointing to the 'new' page and the 'freshness' of the pages themselves...

Stale v Fresh is *not* age of the content specifically. A very old page can still be fresh if it consistently attracts fresh links from fresh pages.

[dailypress]

Stale v Fresh is *not* age of the content specifically. A very old page can still be fresh if it consistently attracts fresh links from fresh pages.

Interesting! I did not know that.

[tedster]

That tidbit about fresh links was fist mentioned in the Historical Data Patent [webmasterworld.com] - and other patents since then. The link goes to our original thread about the patent. It was a major wake-up call for webmasters who had an overly simplistic idea of how Google ranks pages.

[HuskyPup]

Anyone else noticing this increased speed?

That's how fast Google used to be during open beta testing in the 90s...I wonder if they've gone back to the original algo? Lol...:-)

[johnnie]

That's how fast Google used to be during open beta testing in the 90s...I wonder if they've gone back to the original algo? Lol...:-)

Quick! Get your meta keywords ready!

[wheel]

It was a major wake-up call for webmasters who had an overly simplistic idea of how Google ranks pages.

Knowing everything you need to know to rank is as simple and as difficult as online marketing.

Centers of influence, networking, asking for the sale, all terms from the 70's and earlier, all stuff that still helps rank in Google :).

It works, because no matter how smart Google gets, you're in line with their goals. Let them come to you rather than trying to figure out what they're doing and going to them.

[johnnie]

Wow! It almost feels like the old infoseek days are returning! Updates are nearly instantaneous!

[RonS]

Of the alerts I've had in the past year or so for mytown-web.co.uk most have been for sites that mention the words mytown and web separately, missing out any mention of my domain whatsoever! When I do get a valid domain the results are from spurious make-it-up-as-you-go-along whois spam sites which as like as not don't even have the hyphen.

Put quotes around the domain name in the alert, eg "mytown-web.co.uk".