Google Caffeine: Put Your Page on Red Bull, Baby
I wrote about the Google Caffeine Update in this blog way back in November. (Google Caffeine and What It Means to Webmasters, 11/23/09) Finally, on June 8, Google tells us that it's complete. What Caffeine does is take a linear index and turn it into a crazy network of activity that looks like the atom.
As Google points out, the index is not necessarily what's happening on the Web this instant. Instead, they've been gathering data for all the cool keywords you folks type into their search bar (that's what spiders do) and indexing it. In lay terms, keeping it on tap. It's in the vault. Right? But, they could only change it one portion at a time. So, it was a tad to slow for that hasty Google, and so, they created an indexing system that works on parallel levels. Many things are being indexed at the same time on many levels. Pretty cool, when you think about it. I often wonder who is that SMART? I mean, really?
Amazing.
So, now, you really have to concern yourself with page speed because that's going to be a big part of Caffeine.
There are some things you can do to find out how quickly your page loads… I'll tell you a dev way in a minute, but a simple way now. I just went over to Vertain Software (http://www.vertain.com/?sst) and here's what I got for this blog's front door:
Hmm… Look at that! Google is kicking my blog's butt. Who didn't know that? I come in somewhere worse than the post office but better than CNN. Does that mean I'll get higher search listings than CNN? Hehehehe… Not likely. Speed is only one part of the algorithm. They crush me in sheer popularity alone and crush is an understatement. It's more like greasy spotize me.
So, I went to another site for the heck of it. Wow! Try this one: www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/
You get a ton of information back, and most of it deals with compression, images, and image attributes for me. I can do a lot with this.
But a blog changes all the time. I might run this test again next week and because a video has dropped off my page, perhaps I'll do better. Or, how's this for an idea? Show fewer posts on the front page? That should certainly help, especially since I don't post a video every day.
Now, here's the dev way: You get the add-ons Firebug and Page Speed for Firefox. You open Firebug and run Page Speed and you get the same recommendations for compression and such, but now, you're in devspeak. It's a language that I only sometimes understand and mostly don't.
Of the three options, I liked WebsiteOptimization.com. The suggestions they gave were easy to understand and actionable, and they show you how many seconds it takes to load your page with different connection speeds, from 14K to T1. It was eye-opening to see that on a 14K connection, it would take EIGHT minutes to download my blog's front page. Eight minutes!
Yes, I did have a 14K modem way back in the stone age in 1996. But before that, I only had a Compaq Deskpro with 286K RAM and a 20M hard drive. The screen was amber. It was primitive, didn't connect to the Internet at all, but it lasted 10 years! Yes, I actually had my own desktop computer in 1986. Those were the days of waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting… and you get the idea.
Anyway, pay attention to your load times. It's going to make a difference with Google from here into the future people. We have to keep up da changes.
Related Reading:
Related posts:
- http://www.JenniferHerndon.com Jennifer
- http://theSEONewsBlog.com/ PatMarcello
- http://theSEONewsBlog.com/ PatMarcello
