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It’s been a while since I posted a blog post. To be precise, more than 6 months have passed and this is my first post after a well-deserved hiatus. A lot has changed in the meanwhile. SEO has seen some major changes being incorporated by Google and Bing and things do not look like the same as they were in the last year. Well, with the web evolving faster than before, it is imperative for Google to be one step ahead of the competition and we have seen genuine efforts by the Google team to freshen up the search results to make them more meaningful.

Or should I say that the efforts to continue and present sharp, concise and crisp search results will always gain strength at Google and Bing. We can discuss about the changes in organic search over another post and for now I wish to talk about Comment Spam.

So, when I logged into my blog after a hiatus of 6 months I see that I have some 496 comments awaiting moderation. Mighty pleased with my content writing skills, I thought I will give it a go and went through the first set of 10 comments. And, that was it !!! It was all the automated junk thrown in by automated comment spam tools. Not only that, Russian IP addresses and messages promoting Vicodine and the usual viagra spam seem to have plundered by webhost’s space. Needless to say, all these comments are a part of the trash.

It took me less than 5 minutes to throw all comments in the bin. And, I do realize that some of these 496 comments may have been usual and meaningful comments as well. But, listen, who has the time to read all the junk and filter the good comments? Is there a system that could do this for me? While, it may be early times yet to put in place a system that cares for genuine users, I am leaning towards Disqus for comment moderation. Yes, the normal antispam capabilities of Akismet are good. But, I need something more robust and strong to stem the spam and encourage meaningful discussions. And, I think Disqus affords me the opportunity to look into engaging with my audience in a much better way.

Anyways, the merits or the demerits of Disqus are something that my team will work on. For now, I thank you for reading through this post and I will make efforts to engage with the audience to discuss latest events happening in the SEO world.

So, Matt finally broke the news that Caffeine gets ready for a full scale launch sometime after holidays. Oh…these few weeks will be one of suspense, action and strategies for all the seo experts and seo companies. Now that Caffeine has been successfully tested and is set for a first stage launch in one of the Google datacenters, it is time for everyone to welcome Caffeine and evolve the strategy for search and align it with the new expectations of Caffeine. This is especially going to be a long haul for a seo company like us.

You can read Matt’s note over here:

Google Caffeine Update

So, what does this mean?

Expect to see the following:

- A faster search performance, thus cutting down the time you take to search through maze of results

- A broader search index, implying that the number of pages that are indexed by Google will go up drastically. What this means is that the overall search library pages will increase manifold.

- Some sort of an adjustment in the way Google sees the backlinks. I am sure they cannot discount it completely, but the content of the site will form the first level of filter for search engine rankings.

- Expect a lot of changes in the way backlinks are weighed. Remember how the directory links were devalued? I think there is some sort of a devaluation that can be expected for other source of links as well. And, the Aim behind this will be to reduce spam that is generated in the name of backlinks.

- A new guideline on how the on-page optimization should be effectively handled to increase the search engine’s love. By far this might be the biggest change that will happen over the search. And, all those folks who threw the optimization books out of their windows will be rushing to grab them and learn the basics of optimizing the website content.

- And last but not the least, you can expect that site owners will be rewarded for original and inspiring content.

Well, to be honest, these are my expectations from Caffeine, and if some or all of these do not happen then I won’t be disappointed. Search, as they say, is evolving.

The launch of Bing has been a challenge in more ways than one for Google. Under pressure to come up to speed with the changes in Search Engine Marketing and the rampant abuse of the search engines by sauve Internet Marketers, Google made it clear that the future of search will be dictated by Google Caffeine. Well, the name sounds so intoxicating.And as time passes, rumblings of launch of Google Caffeine gain credence all round.

What is Google Caffeine and how can you make the most of it?

Before discussing about Google Caffeine, let us spend a minute in thinking about the intent of Google. With the FTC banking down on affiliates strongly, Google was already determined to concentrate on ranking higher those sites that have better content than better backlinks. In other words, the on-page optimization factors will play a very pivotal role in ranking of websites. What this means is that the backlinks will continue to enjoy a role in rankings, but the overall rank will be a blend of on-page and off-page optimization rather than the current scenario.

The aim is to make search cleaner, more relevant and friendly to the users. And eventually, break the cartel of spammers who put half-baked information on the web.

While nobody knows what will Caffeine bring, there are some rough assumptions that it will follow search ranking criteria that are closer to Bing, and evolve rankings by changing some of the criteria in the Algorithm. With more than 200 ranking criteria in the current algorithm, the ratio of on-page and offpage optimization seems to be headed over to some kind of a rejig.

For now, webmasters like me need not fear because we stand to gain with Google Caffeine. And if it turns out to be as lean and mean as it is being made out to be, who knows that you and me may be laughing our way to the Banks !!!

Well, there is some talk of the impending announcement at the Pubcon by Matt Cutts. You know Matt is quite good at pulling off coups like announcing the commencement of alpha, beta testing of Caffeine, and I love his giggle when he is pushed to the wall.

Here is to Google Caffeine’s success.