Many people might remember the famous “Florida Update” in 2003, during the Holiday season Google changed it’s search algorithm which cause a huge dispute amongst webmasters. Many websites lost their traffic ranking just before the heave sales period during the Holidays causing many complaints.
This year, Google will implement the Google Caffeine sandbox shortly after the Holiday season. This time Google is taking it slowly, rolling it out slowly to get feedback and make improvements. Google Caffeine is only implemented on one data center only showing up to a small percentage of users, so changes are not noticeable to searchers yet. This process will help gather further information to improve the Caffeine sandbox slowly. After the holidays, additional data centers would be added.
At the moment, there are many speculations out there but no one will the definite answers until the Caffeine sandbox is finally out. According to Matt Cutts from Google the changes would be the way Caffeine sandbox will index.
For existing SEO clients, when the Caffeine sandbox finally kicks in a drop in ranking will be prevalent. There’s no worries as this is the ‘norm’ when Google makes any changes. Our web team will be on their toes doing their research to get your ranking back up as soon as possible.