New Google Search Index 50% Fresher With Caffeine

When Google started, it would only update its index every four months, then around 2000, it started indexing every month in a process called the "google dance" that took a week to 10 days and would provide different results when searching for the same term from different Google data centers. Now PC World reports that Google has introduced a new web indexing system called Caffeine, that delivers results that are closer to "live" by analyzing the web in small portions and updating the index on a continuous basis. "Caffeine lets us index web pages on an enormous scale," writes Carrie Grimes on the official Google Blog. "Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day." Now not only does Caffeine provide results that are 50 percent fresher than Google's last index, adds Grimes, but the new search index provides a robust foundation that will make it possible for Google to build a faster and more comprehensive search engine that scales with the growth of information online.