Google peps up search with Caffeine tool

Google plans to use Caffeine as the basis for its future search services

Google has launched an indexing tool designed to build and maintain the company's search engine. The Caffeine service will aim to speed up the rate at which the huge search index refreshes itself.

Rather than indexing large portions of the web at a time, Caffeine will find smaller updates to individual pages and files, and use that information to maintain the search index.

Google said that the new platform will allow it to build larger indexes, and perform searches 50 per cent faster. The company estimates that the complete index requires 100 million gigabytes of storage with room for additional growth.

Google plans to use Caffeine as the basis for its future search services as it looks to accelerate performance and improve accuracy for a growing archive of information.

"As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index," said Google software engineer Carrie Grimes in a blog post.

"That means you can find fresher information than ever before, no matter when or where it was published."