Major Caffeine Update to Google (plus pagerank update)

Google is starting to rollout its "Caffiene" update and it appears to be really affecting sites. I am also noticing major changes on the sites I run as far as traffic is concerned, but things are far from settled. Anybody else noticing changes?

There are lots of reports of people losing traffic to their sites, and some chatter about how this might just be temporary during the update. Of course nobody really knows, but its interesting to watch what is going on right now. Google seems to do a major change to its search algorithm every year or so, I would guess this is the major change for 2010. Although this might not actually be an algorithm change according to someone from webmasterworld:



According to Matt Cutts on March 16, 2010:



Most people are speculating that this major update is now taking place, and from what I have seen on the sites I run I believe this to be correct. You might also watch this interview from March 4, 2010 with Matt Cutts:

http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/5186826

Fast forward to about 2 minutes into the video if you want to just get right into it.

Also a pagerank update appears to just have taken place.

I'm seeing good things with all of the sites I operate. One of my favorite sites saw a 50% increase in visitors yesterday.

It makes sense that the underlying data storage system could have an impact on rankings. It would be like going from having the citizens of Florida decide who wins an election because of a limited number of ballots VS having all 50 states decide with a virtually unlimited number of ballots.

I noticed the PR update, haven't had a clue though about Caffeine..

Don't know if Caffeine is really updated or not? But I am seeing some major ranking changes. Google is dancing I think.

Caffeine updated in major data center which leads to more deep crawling of website, better visibility, and more emphasis on good content.