Friday, I reported that there was a possible Google update taking place. Truth be told, it was actually webmasters hitting on the data center which showed the Google Caffeine results.
Matt Cutts of Google confirmed that Caffeine was going live on 209.85.225.103, at least for 50% of the users hitting that data center. He also said that I was totally off in reporting that Google is doing a major update - they are not. What people are seeing is the Caffeine results on that single data center.
Google did tell us that they would not fully launch Caffeine until after the holiday season. In fact, they promised to launch Caffeine on a single data center, and this is what they did.
So the update is not a full update, just a Caffeine update on a single Google data center that should not have a huge impact on online retailers during this holiday season.
I should clarify that my post on Friday did actually say that this can be that Caffeine was live on a single data center and those reporting the update was indeed only looking at the data center. In any event, Caffeine is now live on that single data center (at least 50% of the time), so check it out at 209.85.225.103.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums, Google Webmaster Help and WebmasterWorld.
