Google Caffeine Is Giving Me A Headache

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I’m sure that like many Google evangelists, SEO specialists and Business Owners, you too have been following the changes and the instability in organic ranks in Google Search results for the past 60 days or so. It has been anything but comforting seeing the ranks go up and down for all clients and websites we track. I don’t know about you but Google Caffeine is giving me a headache.

It first started as minor moves in ranks. Number one moved to number five in SERPs, then four and then back to one. At some point, the ranks were number eleven (2nd page of Google) on the weekends and number two in the weekdays. I know that many so called SEO Experts would say at this point, “Forget the ranks; do not track the ranks! Just look at the analytics!” with their dark voices … so before they do that, calm down! We track analytics religiously but somehow it’s really difficult to explain to a client why the ranks are fluctuating so much after steadily rising or at least steady for 3 years, not to mention that ranks are still the main selling ...
... point in the SEO world as profits and conversions follow after achieving visibility at the top of Google.

Numerous questions pop into our heads when something like this happens, the first one being “What’s Google up to?” Well, the only logical explanation we can come up with looking at stats and ranks is that Google is testing (trial and error) certain elements in their algorithm which is directly related to Google Caffeine. They’re also trying to make the user searches more relevant and useful. How do we come to this conclusion? Here are the facts;

1. Freshly added (new) content is indexed by Google much faster, and ranked much faster across the board.
2. We have seen specific major changes in ranks and in traffic for some clients and their competition. This basically tells us that the changes could have positive and negative effects on websites. Lucky for us (we usually call this hard work and doing the right thing), our clients’ saw positive results that appear to be holding now.
3. If you know anything about Google Base / Google Products, you should have realized that your traffic from Base might have decreased big time in the past 30 days. The reason for this is because Google now requires MPC (Manufacturer’s Part Number) and UPC (Universal Product Number) to make the product search results better organized. This appears to be part of overall changes we see because Google Product Listings now appear regularly within the organic search rankings.
4. We have seen that sites that do not update their content regularly and add new content are decreasing in both ranks and traffic. This means that Google actually practices what it preaches. This can only mean one thing; CONTENT remains KING.

So, what does all this mean for you? We are seeing that for the past 10 days or so the ranks have been more stable. We are not sure if Google is done with its Caffeine experiments, but clearly this does not make SEO any easier or more predictable. There are also some theories out there worth mentioning such as Google is using unpredictability in organic rankings to push the predictability of PPC ads. However, we just believe that this is another effort by them to stay on top of the game by analyzing all their data and optimizing their search and indexing capabilities. After all, it’s the quality of their organic search results that earned them their reputation and drives the bidding and popularity of their paid search model. At least the stability in the past 10 days eased our headaches. Let’s see if we will need a stronger prescription for Google Caffeine in the near future.