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Caffeine, Google’s most recent algorithm update has been in the works for some time, but is being rolled out over the first part of this year. The biggest change in the Caffeine algorithm is the increased importance of web site load time. Up until now, this has been a point of contention in the SEO community – some argued it was taken into account by search algorithms, while others argued it was not. With the unveiling of Caffeine, we finally have a definitive answer: sites that aren’t optimized to load fast and effectively will see a definite drop in their organic search rankings.

What type of sites are usually the slowest to load? Bingo, Flash sites. The thorn in the side of SEO’s for years. Even with Google’s latest spiders being able to crawl through Flash content, the rankings are on average much lower than non-Flash sites. After the Caffeine integration, page rankings for Flash sites will drop even further.  Coincidentally, another device will be launched in the next month that has a beef with Flash – the iPad. I won’t be the one to say that Google and Apple have conspired to wipe Flash-heavy sites off the internet, but it definitely seems like a sign of the times to come, especially if the iPad is a huge commercial success as predicted. Of course, even Adobe has voiced its distaste of the overuse of flash and how it can detract from the user experience, as stated in the Flash Blog. http://theflashblog.com/?p=1698

But back to Caffeine,  what other changes will we see?

An increased relevance will be given to quality outgoing links and having fresh, updated content. Google will be making a push to keep search rankings current and relevant by giving higher rankings to sites with targeted, up to date content and pertinent outgoing links. Actually, as a whole, it would seem that the caffeine update will primarily be affecting on-site SEO and not offsite SEO – good news to those who have spent countless hours building incoming links. Google is effectively using their algorithm to police the internet and banish slow or irrelevant sites to the back pages of search listings. And why not? I don’t know anyone who enjoys running a search and finding a three year old article pop up as the top result only to have to scroll through two pages to find a more current article.

I also wouldn’t be surprised if some sort of extra relevance was given to sites that were heavily linked by social networks. Google’s live feed, social circle search results, and the launch of Google Buzz all look like pretty clear indication that Google’s future looks to draw heavily from the spheres of social media.

As a final note, Google will also be rewriting their own indexing structure which will allow them to crawl sites faster and produce search results quicker. Hey, at least they aren’t hyprocrites.

Some tools for you…

Page Speed: http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/index.html

Keyword Tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

The Google Chrome Blog has announced a new beta edition of Chrome, Google’s browser, which includes innovative language translation options and a new set of privacy tools.  The machine translation comes as part of Google’s popular Web Monkey translation engine for the Web while the new privacy tools are what many users have said Chrome should have had from the get-go.

eWeek says that the new updates come when Chrome has reached 5.6% of the browser market share.  The polyglot language options for Chrome are very unique and particularly useful, probably making Chrome the easiest of the browsers to use with multi-lingual translation.

The browser simply knows your base language setting and when a site is loaded that is in a different language, it automatically offers a button to translate.  Simple and effective.

The privacy additions are something which PCWorld agrees are a long time coming.  They allow site-specific privacy settings for JavaScript, cookies, plug-ins, pop-ups, and more.  The new privacy options are available only in the Windows SP2/vista versions of Chrome, but are definitely a step in the right direction.

These latest updates to Chrome are available in the Chrome Beta channel.

Watch out Netflix, the Disneyland of retail is moving into streaming movies.  In a surprise move, Walmart announced the takeover of VUDU, a little-known provider of digital movie and entertainment content.  The company has been embedding itself over the past three years into HD-ready televisions and Blu-ray players while at the same time brokering licensing deals with major movie studios and distributors.

According to the New York Times on the issue, less than 5% of HD TVs can connect to the Internet directly.   Walmart, obviously, wants to change that and is one of the few companies with the clout to do it.  The report is that Walmart paid $100 million for Vudu, beating out Best Buy and Comcast, among others.  Of those who’d shown interest, though, Walmart is probably the only one with the supply chain control to dictate to their electronics suppliers that all devices be VUDU-ready.

For their own future’s sake, I hope NASCAR is HD and VUDU-ready too.  haha

The price tag on this little-known, 3-year-old startup was a lot larger than most would have expected, but Walmart is getting more than just another online streaming service.  VUDU has what PCWorld considers the best streaming quality in the business, coming in at 1080 pixels – far superior to competitor Netflix.

But that streaming tech is only part of what Walmart gets out of this deal.  Likely to be more valuable are the licensing agreements VUDU has with nearly every major movie studio and distributor as well as a large number of indie and international distributors.  About 16,000 movies so far, plus another 1,800 adult films (which will probably be dumped, given Walmart’s family-friendly orientation).

It’s definite that this deal could change the face of streaming entertainment and content, with Walmart having the muscle to integrate more than just movies into the future VUDU lineup.

Google has acquired the Aardvark social search and cloud information network.  Aardvark allows users to ask questions that others in the network can answer, according to their expertise.  Since it’s introduction in 2008, Aardvark has built a strong following of users and has integrated itself into email, Google Chat, and other services to become easy to use.

Aardvark works by allowing users to ask questions, which are sent over the network of other Aardvark users according to keywords within the question, so questions about “pets” go to some users while questions about “banks” go to others.  The users who receive the question can answer and the questioner receives those answers as they come in.  Many questions can receive answers in minutes, all from live people, not machine-generated.

Aardvark has been working on an iPhone app, which may still continue, though it’s likely that this new acquisition will mean Google will want a Nexus One app first.  Current Aardvark users will see no change to their current account, but as Vark and Google updates are made to the app, they will see those implemented.  A new option for allowing Q&A to show up in Google’s Live Search will also be added.

The Aardvark network is now available in Google Labs as well as on Vark.com.

Last year, in November, the Outlook Social Connector was launched and Microsoft entered the social networking game.  At that point, LinkedIn was the only partner, but it was a good start.  Rather than building a new network, ala Google’s Buzz, the Seattle Giant went for combination of existing networks to facilitate easier networking throughout.

Yesterday, Microsoft announced on their blog that the Outlook Social Connector has now stretched from LinkedIn and is including Facebook and MySpace as well.  This big jump means that your Outlook box could become your new FriendFeed and directly compete with Google’s Buzz.

LinkedIn is, understandably, quite happy with this teaming with Outlook.  In fact, the ad-on for the MS email app can be downloaded from LinkedIn as well.  Now that all of this new MS Outlook stuff is out in the public beta phase, a lot of us are expecting more connections to be coming quickly.

The problem here, which will probably change quickly, is that the input to Outlook is only one-way.  So far, the information from LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace is incoming-only and Outlook can’t send updates the other way.  Given the API availability from these networks, however, it likely won’t take long for that to change.  Another thing obviously missing is Twitter, but again, with their API and popularity, it’s likely just a matter of time there too.

The competition for Buzz is obvious and, given the Office suite’s popularity, it could become more than a contender.  While part of the official Office 2010 beta, the Social Connector beta can also be used with 2003 and 2007 Office versions.

Google admitted to BBC News that they made some big mistakes with the new social service called Buzz.  When Buzz released, it faced a sudden (and unexpected) backlash from several fronts, almost all concerned with privacy issues related to the service.  Most of this was probably due to one simple mistake on Google’s part: lack of testing before launch.

Google now admits that they didn’t run the usual trials with external users (users outside of the Google intranet), as they normally do, and that mistake meant there were a lot of things that didn’t get checked “in the wild.”  While Buzz was tested by 20,000 internal Google employees and others with access to the company’s intranet, it was not tested outside of that group, so they had no feedback from Internet users at large.  Until launch, that is.

Now, amid controversy and backlash from users, Google is scrambling to make amends.  Engineers and executives are gathered in a “war room” in the Mountain View, California headquarters of Google, reports the LA Times.  Some changes have already been made and others are coming, all to appease privacy concerns and other user feedback.

Meanwhile, users continue to discuss Buzz and most often compare it to FriendFeed, which it most closely resembles.  Most who make this comparison seem to think that Google copied all of the worst of FriendFeed’s features and left the good stuff out.

If Google really wants to make Buzz better, they should probably listen to those concerns once they’ve completed dealing with the privacy issues.  FriendFeed is a well-known service, but has become marginalized as users find it less and less useful.

Google Buzz was a good idea and could become something great in this space, but will need to incorporate some usability fixes first.  The biggest are filters and changes for those with large lists of friends, whose Buzz box right now fills quickly with no way to control what is “on top” and most relevant.