Google "Caffeine" Offers Faster Search Engine Results; Numerous Analytics Updates Also Announced

From the CAP News page:

December 31, 2009 (CAP Newswire) – Just in time for 2010, Google has announced that its signature search engine is about to get a lot faster. Using the appropriate project name of “Caffeine”, Google has engineered a way for its search engine to index the Internet much more quickly than before.

The everyday Internet user may not notice the changes; Google’s look and feel aren’t going to be altered in any way, and the company hasn’t publicized the change as much as some of its past nalterations. But, according to Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch, “['Caffeine'] will significantly speed up how fast Google can present results, especially across different media types such as photos and videos. Overall, search will be more realtime because Google considers the speed of its index to be a competitive advantage.” (Read Schonfeld’s article here.)

In other Google online marketing news, the company has also just released a new set of features for Google Analytics. Useful to Internet marketing data analysts as well as those marketers who are less than enthusiastic about the data analysis that successful online marketing often requires, the improvements are aimed at improving collaboration for groups, such as the ability to make comments on data graphs.

“Annotations complements existing anomaly detection by capturing the tribal intelligence of your company, which tends to be the most expensive and easily lost resource of all,” According to a recent Google blog entry. “A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set of numbers.” (Read the Google blog here.)

“Google also announced two additional features for Google Analytics,” writes Daniel Waisberg at Search Engine Land. “Custom variables can now be segmented through advanced segments and they are also available in custom reports. This adds even more power to current segmentation capabilities in Google analytics.” (Read that article here.)

Also released is a new “wizard” tool that can tweak the Google Analytics code and add a few advanced functions, giving the ability to configure for multiple domains and create more advanced, customized tracking.