Caffeine - New Google's Indexing System

On June 8, 2010 Google announced the completion of a new web indexing system called Caffeine. According to a company blog post, Google built the new search indexing system over a year ago to keep up with the evolution of the Web and to meet rising user expectations. Caffeine offers 50 percent fresher results for web searches than Google's last index and boasts the largest collection of web content the company has ever offered.

In comparison to the old index, Caffeine allows Google to index web pages on a much larger scale, making it possible for users to find new pages or information faster than before. In the old index, which was comprised of several layers, to refresh a layer Google would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to the searcher. With Caffeine, Google is able to analyze the web in small portions and update the search index on a regular basis.

According to the announcement, "Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day."

What does this mean for searches and content owners? Webmaster Central Blog said, "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."