Google Shifts Indexing Closer to Continuous with Caffeine: “50 Percent Fresher Results”

After nearly a year of fervent anticipation, including at least one false start, Google has officially unveiled Caffeine, a new web indexing system which its says will allow you to find fresh content ever faster thanks to a new indexing process. If Google’s helpful infographic above is less than helpful, the main shift underway in Caffeine consists of a move away from layers and towards “analyz[ing] the web in small portions and updat[ing] our search index on a continuous basis, globally.” According to Google, Caffeine was necessary because of the greater complexity of the web, particularly the social web.

Google:

So why did we build a new search indexing system? Content on the web is blossoming. It’s growing not just in size and numbers but with the advent of video, images, news and real-time updates, the average webpage is richer and more complex. In addition, people’s expectations for search are higher than they used to be. Searchers want to find the latest relevant content and publishers expect to be found the instant they publish.

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We’ve built Caffeine with the future in mind. Not only is it fresher, it’s a robust foundation that makes it possible for us to build an even faster and comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online, and delivers even more relevant search results to you. So stay tuned, and look for more improvements in the months to come.

The extent to which Caffeine will noticeably impact your own web browsing experience has been exaggerated in some quarters: It’s unlikely to radically reorder less time-sensitive searches. Still, as a means of sifting the social web and an expansion upon what was already in place, Google just got a little better.

(via Google Blog)