Google has lifted the lid on a new version of its search engine, allowing users to look at the results it will generate.
The new engine, available at a separate address, looks the same as the current one but ranks results differently, which could affect businesses who rely on Google results to drive traffic.
In a blog posting late Monday, Google Inc. says the new engine, code-named “Caffeine,” will be faster, more accurate and more comprehensive.
The public testing of the new engine comes two weeks after Microsoft Corp. struck a deal to replace Yahoo Inc.’s search engine, with its own Google competitor, called Bing. Yahoo Search and Bing are the second and third most popular engines after Google.
Although little about the surface appearance of the new version has changed, engineers promised that radical changes behind the scenes would vast improvements for ordinary users.
“For the past several months a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search,” said the company in a statement on one of its blogs.
“It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”
The company claims that significant changes to the way the system works will improve the experience for users – although it will also send shockwaves through the community of marketers who try and optimise their results to appear higher up in Google’s index.
