Google has, on its blog, announced the completion of its new web indexing system called Caffeine. It is actually an upgraded version of its current search engine, which Google promises will be faster, more accurate and comprehensive than the previous one. For instance, it will provide 50 percent fresher results for web searches, whether it is a news story, a blog, or a forum post, and even better, there will be links to relevant content much sooner after it is published.

According to Google’s official blog, the new search indexing system was built because of the way the web is growing. With the advent of videos, images, news and real-time updates as well as higher user expectations, it has to keep up with such evolution of the web.

While the old index had several layers, of which the main layer or web Google needs to analyze every couple of weeks, Caffeine analyzes the web in smaller portions, updates its search index on a continuous basis, globally and also index web pages on an enormous scale. Hence, fresher information will be available to the public, and much faster too.

Mashable did a test on the new Google Caffeine, taking the developer version and comparing it to not only the current version of Google, but also to Bing as well. While the test was not scientifically correct, it found that the new Google was indeed faster, relies more on keyword strings to produce better results, and it is on par with Bing to get real-time information on breaking events.

Having said these, how is Google Caffeine going to affect your website rankings? Mainly, the speed at which Google will be able to update rankings due to website changes will be much faster. You or your SEO consultant will need to make sure that your website’s design is clean-cut, has no broken links, no spam elements or invisible text in the background, and the navigation from one page to another is well organized. You must also review the social bookmarks in your website. The more bookmark links you have to and from trusted websites, the better it is for your website. Lastly, sites with fresher content or updated news every day will be ranked much higher. This still holds true for Caffeine, as it does with the old Google index.

Overall, Google Caffeine is not going to have a huge effect on how you conduct your SEO, although it varies from site to site. Definitely, Caffeine will only get better as more updated features are developed, and while we wait to see that happen, just continue to do what you have always been doing for your website, and more aggressively – link building and content organizing – and the result will be a better experience for your users.

Meanwhile, if you want to know in detail how the old Google index works, here is a graphical representation, thanks to ppcblog.