googleThis week Google announced that it is allowing users to try their newly upgraded search technology dubbed “Caffeine”. Not espresso, if you are keeping track, just Caffeine.

Google is pushing that not only is the new product to be faster, but it is more accurate and is more comprehensive. It is no wonder that this announcement is basically right after Microsoft and Yahoo announced that they were partnering up to beat out Google.

This is unusual for Google, as it usually rolls out it’s upgrades and improvements just as part of the build, with little or no hype. But now, not only can we see it in the showroom ahead of time, we can kick the tires and take it for a spin too!

Google is looking for feedback and so far this week, most seems to be positive. But mostly, we are talking small item stuff but it can add up to a lot. Caffeine is fractions of seconds faster, but it is faster. Actually, they doubled the speed and they improved the accuracy somewhat. However, most testers have found that features may not be implemented yet, like image search and news. But one interesting thing to note which seems to be a pattern, this one is relying more on Keywords. So SEO jocks out there, your jobs just got interesting. The algorithm seems to have stronger reliance on keyword strings to produce better results. Also, bringing back relevant real-time results is where it is at. Temporal relevancy is a priority with this new release.

You can Google (not Bing) all sorts of user tests, but I personally found the above points to be the most relevant. It is obvious that Google didn’t just produce this stuff overnight and they had been working on it, but it may be good that Bing got into the ring (clever, eh?) as nothing spurs innovation like competition. Can’t wait for the final build to go live. No word on that yet, but it shouldn’t be too long of a wait.