Google Caf­feine is the name given to Google’s “Next Gen­er­a­tion” search engine, which it will use to rank and index all the pages on the won­der­ful world wide web. Accord­ing to all indi­ca­tions, this is not just another one of Google’s infa­mous Updates, but a major “Over­haul” of its index and algo­rithm, the com­plex for­mula and cal­cu­la­tions Google uses to rank all web pages, includ­ing yours.

If that doesn’t sound omi­nous enough, accord­ing to Matt Cutts (Google Spokesper­son) one data­base is already show­ing Google Caf­feine, and the full blown ver­sion will be released after the hol­i­days. The rea­son­ing behind this, Google doesn’t want to upset web­mas­ters and site own­ers dur­ing the lucra­tive hol­i­day buy­ing sea­son. In the past, other major Google Updates have come around this time of the year, most notably the “Florida Update” which severely affected many web sites and webmasters.

Recently, Google has been more aware and much more gen­er­ous to web­mas­ters by being more open and forth­com­ing in regards to how it indexes its pages. This time around, web­mas­ters were even given access to a beta ver­sion of Caf­feine which Google released last sum­mer (’09) where web­mas­ters could check to see how well their key­words and site would fare in this new search index. This beta site (www2.sandbox.google.com) has now been taken down by Google.

Like any pro­fes­sional search engine mar­keter who works online, I was con­stantly check­ing my sites and key­words in Google’s new search engine. I have drawn some con­clu­sions from what I have observed, but please be aware it is often very fool­ish to draw con­clu­sions and make pre­dic­tions from your own small sam­pling of results. You can end up with egg on your face very quickly, espe­cially when you con­sider Google is prob­a­bly still mak­ing adjust­ments and refine­ments on Caf­feine as it ana­lyzes the results.

How­ever, there are cer­tain rank­ing fac­tors that even Google is telling us about, mainly “Site Speed” or how fast your site loads will play a part in how it’s ranked. We have also heard a lot about “Bro­ken Links” and if your page or site has them, then it will prob­a­bly be ranked lower. Of course, link­ing out to “Bad Neigh­bor­hoods” will prob­a­bly still not be a good prac­tice if you want higher rank­ings within Google.

It should not come as a shock or a sur­prise, that “Over-All Page Qual­ity” will play a greater role in how well your page ranks. Keep in mind, Google is like any other com­pany putting out a prod­uct, if that prod­uct doesn’t have a high stan­dard of qual­ity, it reflects badly back on every­one con­cerned. Google’s SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is the key to all their online rev­enue, they must do every­thing in their power to keep that prod­uct fast, rel­e­vant, cur­rent and above all, some­thing of high quality.

There­fore, expect “OnPage Fac­tors” to play a much greater role in Google Caf­feine. Qual­ity unique con­tent, page design, good nav­i­ga­tion, title, meta tags, descrip­tion, key­word den­sity, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, traf­fic num­bers, time spent on page, and the num­ber of social book­marks may play an increased role in achiev­ing high rank­ings. A per­fectly opti­mized key­worded page, with the key­word in the title, descrip­tion, meta tags, alt tags, on the page… will prob­a­bly get you ranked higher in Caf­feine, as well as most search engines on the web.

This may be pure spec­u­la­tion on my part, but one of the areas Caf­feine will be address­ing or incor­po­rat­ing is “Social Book­Mark­ing”, that is the num­ber of social book­marks a page receives will deter­mine how high it is ranked. I also believe one of the major rea­sons these book­marks will become much more impor­tant has to do with the whole nasty issue of link buying.

Now, the integrity of Google’s index is not in ques­tion, but any savvy mar­keter or web­mas­ter knows any indi­vid­ual or com­pany with deep pock­ets and huge resources can buy their way into the top spot. Despite Google’s attempt to stop it, link buy­ing and key­word posi­tion­ing, is a thriv­ing indus­try on the web. Rightly or wrongly, money and unlim­ited resources will get you or your com­pany to the top in organic search, regard­less of which search engine you’re targeting.

All moral and eth­ni­cal issues aside, the small web­mas­ter and/or online mar­keter is stuck right in the mid­dle, with Google on one side and these major multi­na­tional com­peti­tors on the other. Loom­ing on the hori­zon is Google Caf­feine, a new sher­iff in town!

What new rules will this sher­iff bring?

The major ques­tion here is this: has the impor­tance of back­link­ing been down­played in this new index in favor of the key­worded domain and onsite con­tent and opti­miza­tion? Has there been a major shift to list­ing more qual­ity con­tent rather than rely­ing on the num­ber of back­links a site is receiv­ing, even from impor­tant related themed sites? The major prob­lem and ques­tion to Google is this: if links can be bought, how do you keep your organic results demo­c­ra­tic and fair, which was the orig­i­nal inten­tion of Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they started Google in 1998.

One pos­si­ble solu­tion is social bookmarking.

Will we see an ever grow­ing impor­tance of social book­marks and links in this new index. It is quite easy to buy 1000 links, but get­ting 1000 or 10,000 “re-tweets” is a lit­tle more dif­fi­cult, sim­i­larly get­ting two or three thou­sand “diggs” may be a lit­tle harder to pull off. Same goes for Del.icio.us book­marks, Face­book fans… well you get the pic­ture. Will Google’s use of these new social sites make Caf­feine faster, more rel­e­vant, more cur­rent and most impor­tantly of all, can it bring some democ­racy back into their index?

Of course, noth­ing in Google’s new index will be that cut and dry, that black and white. Other rank­ing fac­tors such as age of site, past his­tory and rep­u­ta­tion, traf­fic num­bers, author­ity brand­ing… will all play a role in whether your site gets listed on that all impor­tant first page. How­ever, on page fac­tors may play a greater role — title, meta tags, descrip­tion, key­word den­sity, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, time spent on page, and the num­ber of social book­marks may play an increased role in achiev­ing high rank­ings. Web­site speed or how fast your site loads may also be a new rank­ing factor.

Under­ly­ing this whole issue is the fact which many expe­ri­enced webmasters/marketers already know, Google’s SERPs is not a one-trick pony any­more. For very lucra­tive (mon­e­tized) key­word phrases, Google’s results are bro­ken up into Five cat­e­gories… Info list­ings, Video list­ings, News List­ings, Shop­ping List­ings and Cor­po­rate List­ings. For­get Caf­feine, this is prob­a­bly the fairest move Google has made in the last few years to make its SERPs more democratic.

Another even more puz­zling issue for me con­cern­ing Google Caf­feine is how much empha­sis or rank­ing power will it place on “Key­worded Domains”, domain names which have your key­word or key­word phrase in them. Will these domains be ranked higher? Web­mas­ters and mar­keters for years have been telling us we should always pick domain names which have our major key­words in them. Just com­mon sense really, some­one search­ing for “brown wid­gets” will more likely than not find that item at a domain called brownwidgets(dot)com or brownwidget(dot)com. The major SEO rea­son­ing, all your back­links will inher­ently have your searched key­word in the URL, thus bring­ing it up in the rankings.

Against this whole back­drop, every­one has to real­ize the web itself is evolv­ing, new sites like Twit­ter, Face­Book… have changed the whole cyber land­scape. Like­wise, the web user is also chang­ing and becom­ing more web savvy in how they use the web. Will search engines, not only Google, take a back-seat role in how we find stuff on the web? As major sites are branded into the web user’s psy­che, will these users go directly to these sites, by-passing the search engines altogether?

As the web evolves, key­worded domains will become more valu­able and this value will be reflected in the qual­ity of the site. If you’re mak­ing thou­sands or even mil­lions from your key­worded domain, you can afford to invest in qual­ity con­tent and design. Cream rises to the top. Grad­u­ally, as these domains become more valu­able, they will prob­a­bly be snapped up by mar­keters and com­pa­nies who know just how to exploit them. Thou­sands upon thou­sands of key­worded domains will prob­a­bly be bought up by multi-billion dol­lar cor­po­ra­tions who finally real­ize what the web has to offer. This new evolved web will prob­a­bly be much more nar­rower in scope and very topic specific.

In the “next gen­er­a­tion” web the re-direct shall be king!

Will the role of the search engines, whether it be Google or Bing/Yahoo, become less and less impor­tant, as savvy web searchers go directly to a site by typ­ing in the key­worded domain to find what they’re look­ing for on the web? Cut­ting out the mid­dle­man may just become a world wide pas­sion as big multi­na­tional and fully funded cor­po­ra­tions snap up all these valu­able and lucra­tive key­worded domains, will we see these domains grow in impor­tance and the search engines take more of a back-up role? Human nature dic­tates we always take the fastest route to our des­ti­na­tion, the web will be no excep­tion to this rule.

Have all the smart peo­ple at Google fig­ured this out already, and designed the new Google Caf­feine to reflect the grow­ing impor­tance of the key­worded domain? Of course, we can only spec­u­late when it comes to just what Google is plan­ning and doing with its next gen­er­a­tion search engine, but will onsite fac­tors and your domain name play a greater role in their organic SERPs?

Regard­less of what the new sher­iff actu­ally does, when the dust finally set­tles on all these lat­est devel­op­ments, the key­worded domain will prob­a­bly be stand­ing tall, watch­ing the sun rise on a brand new day.