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http://www.universalmind.com/

Introducing Google Caffeine (now Kaffein) UNOFFICIALLY launched

Matt Cutts (Google) blogged about Caffeine in Nov 2009, and it appears that google has been integrating the release of Caffeine (now Kaffein) gradually.  

Starting on about April 1st, depending on your location on the planet, you may have seen some changes to your ranking.

Think your website speed doesn't matter?   One of the new ranking factors with the rollout of Kaffein is speed.   Kaffein incorporates a new speed ranking algorithm, and although google claims that this new factor only effects 1% or less of all search results, given that all other ranking factors are equal, your website speed will rank you above or below your competitors.   Its a fact that bounce rates are higher amongst slower sites, and google factors this in as a less desirable search result.   Cutts offers an explanation of speed based ranking and debunks a few misconceptions on his April 9 blog entry.  "speeding up your website isn’t just something that can affect your search rankings–it’s a fantastic idea for your users".

Still don't think your site speed is that big of a deal?   Lets talk about pay-per-click Ad-Words.   I am getting reports from customers, that with the rollout of Kaffein, ad-words are costing more, and the additional cost is directly related to page speed.  I have yet to verify this, but several marketing departments concur.

Google also seems to be ranking results and ads based on IP address geo-coding, meaning that relevancy now relates to your actual geographic location, or at least where google THINKS you are.

If you want to compare Kaffein results against the old google, check out http://www.comparecaffeine.com/ .   Ranking differences seem to be fluctuating, indicating that google may still be tweaking the new algorithm.

Tools - "Site Performance" and "Page Speed" by Google

Similar to Yahoo ySlow, Google labs provides "Page Speed" in their "Labs" section of "Site Performance" webmaster tools.

"Site Performance" trends and analyzes your site page performance while "Page Speed" evaluates performance from the client point of view and makes recommendations on how to improve the end user performance experience. These are extremely useful tools for tracking and improving your end user performance related experience.

http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/

Gomez 2 Minute Explainer

Gomez is the leader in Web Performance Monitoring.   This 2 minute explainer lends great insight into their approach, and the importance of managing the web delivery chain.
http://www.gomez.com/resources/video-library/web-performance-monitoring-two-minute-explainer/

$$ Load Time is Money $$

How much is your page load time costing you ? Gomez (Compuware) just launched a calculation tool. Plug in your numbers and see.        http://www.compuware.com/fastcalc/

Fast or Furious?

We made it past the holidays.   Some on-line retailer's "got it" and some did not.    Were your customers FAST or FURIOUS ?

Are you getting a failing grade ?

One clear Google philosophy is that "form" never comes before function, and that FAST is king over nearly all other UI design requirements.   If you want to grade your site performance and optimization levels quickly and easily, just load up the Yahoo "YSlow" add-on to Firebug in Firefox and you can now go around grading any site you like.   It make's great suggestions for optimizing, or for which of your web developers to fire.

To quote the master performance expert Steve Souders

THE PERFORMANCE GOLDEN RULE:  80%-90% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end.  Start there.

Below I have compared both the Microsoft homepage and the google homepage.   Notice that Microsoft nearly flunks out entirely when it comes to optimization.   Its worth noting though, that when I ran the same  test against the Microsoft Bing homepage, it got an "A".