At the core of Google’s mega billion dollar search engine business is its precious algorithm. This algorithm is what underpins a search and ensures that when you type a keyword or phrase into its search engine you get the best results. The algorithm has been so successful over the last decade that it has resulted in Google dominating the market with a market share in the region of 65 percent equates to around 400 million searches a day. Google has such a grip over the business of internet searches that it is able to influence the way people use the internet and indeed which websites receive what traffic. Even very minor changes to the algorithm can change the fortunes of companies and user behaviour.
This fabled algorithm is never static and is an iteration of regular updates with between 550 and 600 changes being made annually. These algorithmic changes vary in scale from very minor “tweaks” to very large changes which influence the whole way searches work.
Back in the mists of 2009 Google announced that it was going to be implementing one of these major algorithm changes. Such was the significance of this change that it even got its own name…Caffeine. Fast forward one year and last week Google implemented the Caffeine update to its algorithm and in doing so significantly changed the way its search engine operates. In basic terms Caffeine is the idea that Google will continuously crawl the web to generate a real time index which allows for users search queries to be compared with a new version of the internet as opposed previously when an older version would be used (up to two weeks old).
The driver for this change is Google desire to remain at the forefront of search engine technology and development along with a need to respond to advances in the expectation of users alongside the explosion in availability of computer power.
When you commit a search with the Google search engine there are in fact currently over 200 variables that the company uses with which to asses which results are returned. In the beginning Google relied on its PageRank methodology to work out which websites should be displayed in which order in response to a particular query. Without wishing to delve too deeply into the detail of PageRank it works on the pretence that when one website links to another it adds value to that website and the more times a website is linked to allows for a rank to be constructed. This made for very predictable, cross platform results.
Improvements to the Google algorithm are borne out of trying to link what people are searching for and what people want hence the caffeine update which will allow for real time results to now be included particularly from social network site and for predictive results. Google are basically trying making it search engine more sophisticated so that you are not getting answers to queries based on “what you need and not what you said”.
Understanding the manner in which google searches work and adapt are becoming fundamentally to any web development and can be hugely influential to your business.