Thu, 07/08/2010 - 16:29 by Matthew Constable

If you run a website or manage one through work, you have probably noticed that Google can take literally months to index your content. It's not unusual for publishers to start seeding content to their website several months or weeks before they intend to make proper use of it - just so that the indexing is there for when they need it.

 

All this has changed recently with the announcement of Google's new searching index called "Caffeine".

 

You can think of of these new changes a bit like a manual stock check. The old Google is like having a member of staff wander up and down each isle of a supermarket all day noting down the name and number of each item. With Caffeine, it's like having loads of staff checking all the items in an isle at one. Obviously the new system means that it takes only a few minutes to perform the same task. (This also gives you some idea of the resources it has taken Google to pull this off! (But then very little that Google does seems to surprise us these days)

 

So what does this mean for publishers?

In short, it means that fresher content will have an upper hand. Google recognise that "Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish." [1] Google is now indexing content so quickly that it's possible to find web pages that weren't even in the index when you started typing your query! [2]

As a publisher you can take advantage of this by delivering content more frequently. For the first time, even small publishers have an opportunity to compete with the mammoth sites who have dominated the ranks for so long.

 

Great! But How?

At this point it is ludicrous not to have a blog. Companies without them will lose out to their competition. The really good news is that if you don't have one already - plan out a few articles and fire one up. You could start seeing results quicker than ever before! 

 

 

[1] Official Google Blog Article

[2] Matt Cutts (Google Webmaster Help) Video on Caffeine

 

As always - any follow up queries welcome to mc@itwiz.co.uk or follow on twitter @itwiz

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