YNOT – If you currently enjoy some useful rankings with Google and feel like you have a pretty good idea of how to nurture results in the world’s most popular search engine then it probably won’t come as welcome news that the company is getting ready to launch the most comprehensive change to its engine since 2006. Dubbed “Caffeine” by the Google development team, the new technology is supposed to provide faster, more relevant and more flexible search results.“For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s Web search,” the company wrote in a blog post last August. “It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

While the new Caffeine technology will work “under the hood,” it’s impossible to tell at this point how it might mix up the playing field for sites already ranked in Google. The blog post in August called for feedback from users on how Google’s newly enhanced engine delivered search results, and posted a link to a test site where anyone could try out the new search engine to see how it ranked results at this stage of the game.

However, visiting that test site now simply informs visitors that the initial test period has ended, and Google is looking to move Caffeine along in the development process.

“Based on the success we’ve seen, we believe Caffeine is ready for a larger audience,” reads a notice on the former test site. “Soon we will activate Caffeine more widely, beginning with one data center. This sandbox is no longer necessary and has been retired, but we appreciate the testing and positive input that webmasters and publishers have given.”

That means webmasters can’t rush to see how they rank, but if the comments left on Google’s blog are any indication, not everyone is going to like the new rankings when Caffeine goes live.

“I for one am not particularly happy,” wrote Stokes73. “My website that has been online for 15 years and has always ranked in the top 10 for several keywords, under Caffeine, [it] doesn’t even show up in the first 40.”

“I am experiencing [a] huge difference in results, my site which [was] in [the] top-10 went straight away to deeper in SERP’s,” wrote Afzal Khan. “I wonder, Mattcuts said if your site is having a good architecture you don’t have to be worried, but I am shocked after comparing Caffeine results with normal Google search. I hope you guys will look into content quality, site authority and many other webmaster guidelines as mentioned in your SEO guide before dropping any good site.”

Some of the comments were more encouraging, however, with one online marketer even offering some insights on how the new engine might prioritize its rankings.

“I can not wait for this to be the standard,” wrote Jason. “Rarely am I enthusiastic about changes to Google’s search (especially as an SEO specialist) but something that I noticed in the new version is that our clients are ranking very well (even better than the norm) and websites that I know to use scattered link building practices are [not] dominating various search terms. It appears that websites who’s links come from news, media, social networks, real content oriented links are being rewarded above sites that just have directory links or links that get thrown to anything that will stick.”

There’s no indication yet when the Caffeine engine might go live with Google search results.