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Last summer Google announced a new project called "Caffeine", which was described as a re-write of Google’s web search architecture. Around that time, Matt Cutts discussed Caffeine with WebProNews, comparing it to the "Big Daddy Update" of 2005, which consisted of changes to the way Google crawls and indexes websites. It appears that more people are now seeing the effects from Caffeine out in the wild.

Have you seen possible Caffeine effects in use? Tell us about it.

Back before the holidays, Google made it a point to assure everybody that Caffeine would not be rolled out (except for at one data center) until after the holidays were over – January at the earliest. The reason for this was that Google didn’t want to shake everything up during a key time for businesses (they didn’t want a repeat of the Florida update).

The company let everyone know about its intentions at PubCon in November. In fact, a few days ago, Google’s Matt Cutts posted a video running through his presentation from that event on his blog. He also provided the slideshow. It covers much more than just Caffeine, but if you missed it, you may want to consider watching it anyway (Caffeine discussion starts at about 22:10 in the video and at slide 29 in the presentation).

"It’s a re-write of our indexing infrastructure. It’s taking the old way that we used to index things that we’d crawled around the web, and we’re replacing that with new architecture that’s fresh and that had been written to be more scalable, more flexible, [with] the ability to attach different types of data, and in the process of indexing, the ability to do more documents for a more comprehensive version of the web, and the ability to do it faster," Cutts says of Caffeine.

But enough background. Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable points to a WebmasterWorld forum thread where administrator Tedster claimed to have seen Caffeine in action at a number of IP addresses. He wrote:

I’m seeing the Caffeine data-set being served via this set of IP addresses: 64.233.169.147, 64.233.169.105, 64.233.169.103, 64.233.169.104, 64.233.169.99,64.233.169.106

It seems to take 5 IP addresses to build the complete SERP, where in the past it often took only 3.

Schwartz also pointed to another member’s post (Whitenight), who said:

Well, just tripled checked with offices/employees in Texas, Colorado, and Indiana. All 5 "control" keywords/sites showed live Caffeine.

That member’s latest post says that the Caffeine Dataset is also on http://66.102.7.99 and http://66.102.7.104.

We don’t know for sure if this is all really Caffeine in action though. Google hasn’t commented on it, and has not made any announcements regarding Caffeine since what Matt said above. Some people don’t believe this is Caffeine at all. As Schwartz notes, we’ll have to wait for Google to say something.

Still, January is almost over, and Google said it would wait until after the holidays, specifically mentioning the month of January. It’s about time for this to be rolling out to some extent. Speed has been emphasized a significant amount in Caffeine discussion, and Cutts told us that page speed would likely become a ranking factor. Regardless of whether or not you are witnessing Caffeine in action yet, rest assured that it will be here sooner or later, and any edge you can give yourself in the meantime is for the good of your own site’s performance. Speed will not only supposedly help you in search going forward, but it just makes for a better user experience.

Share your thoughts about Google’s Caffeine update.

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Bing and Google may have gotten a head start, but Yahoo isn’t ignoring the whole real-time search arena, according to a new report.  In fact (or at least in rumor, if you will), Yahoo may be working on a product with OneRiot right now.

Yes, Michael Arrington reported that Yahoo isn’t pursuing anything with either Facebook or Twitter.  OneRiot, a real-time search engine that’s already up and running, is supposed to be its new pal, instead.  And Arrington wrote, "If our source is correct . . . the product will launch very soon."

So here’s a little more info about OneRiot.  On the corporate side of things: it launched about a year ago, and is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado.  It’s received funding from Spark Capital, which has put money into Twitter, too.

As for the tech, the OneRiot search engine is in beta, yet it deals with both text and video, and more specifically, "crawls the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services," according to an "About Us" page.

It should be interesting to see what (if anything) Yahoo and OneRiot come up with.  Although playing catch-up isn’t easy, they have the opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes and refine their best ideas.

Related Articles:

> How Does Bing Rank Tweets?

> Microsoft And Google Score Deals With Twitter

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The Colorado Tourism Office has launched a new promotion using social media to find three people who have never seen snow.

The campaign is called "Snow At First Sight" and it invites participants to submit a 60 second video to the Snow At First Sight website explaining why they have never seen snow and why they should get a three month all-expense-paid trip to Colorado.

People who submit a video are encouraged to use social media such as Facebook and Twitter to spread the word about their entry. Half of the winners will be chosen based on audience voting while the other five semi-finalists will be selected by a panel in Colorado.

The three winners will spend January through March 2010 in the state and will be given $800 monthly along with all expenses paid.

The winners will be taught by local experts how to ski, snowboard, snowmobile and snowshoe.

In addition, the three winners are required to submit content for a blog, social network and photo/video postings.
 

While some states have created solid websites to provide information about their portion of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), most are failing to effectively educate taxpayers about the impact of economic stimulus spending, according to a report from Good Jobs First, an economic development research group.

"Many states are failing to support President Obama’s vow that the Recovery Act will be carried out with an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability," said Good Jobs First executive director Greg LeRoy.

"By failing to use broadly available web tools, they are making it more difficult to measure the success of ARRA in mitigating the effects of the recession."

The report evaluated the general ARRA websites that all states have created and graded them on transparency on a scale of 0 to 100.

Greg LeRoy
Good Jobs First
Executive Director

Six states score 50 or better for their main ARRA site: Maryland (80), Colorado (68), Washington (63), West Virginia (60), New York (53) and Pennsylvania (50). Thirteen states score 50 or better for their highway reporting, led by Maryland (75), Washington (73), Colorado (65) and Nebraska (60). The average score for the ARRA websites is 28.

Five states that scored very low on providing specifics on how ARRA money is used include Alabama, the District of Columbia, Illinois, Kentucky and Vermont. Illinois received a zero and only provided nation figures on its website and nothing on how much is being spent in the state.

"Given the Recovery Act’s high profile, we expected better results, but most state ARRA sites simply do not measure up," said Philip Mattera, research director of Good Jobs First and principal author of the report.

"The challenge is not insurmountable," he added. "States such as Maryland, Colorado and Washington are doing a very good job in conveying vital information about stimulus spending and are leading the way in establishing best practices for state ARRA disclosure."