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I hate Google. I mean I really loathe them. Arrogant, smug, self-satisfied pricks, every last one of them. Who the hell do they think they are? I own the arrogant, smug, self-satisfied prick thing, been that way since I was born. Now, because this big corporation comes along and plays it like I’ve been playing it all my life, they get all the attention just because nobody knows who the hell I am! How fair is that?

Leaving aside lop-sided rivalries (briefly), and notwithstanding the fact I’ll probably sue at some point, even I have to give them a round of applause for the performance of their new real-time indexing infrastructure and algorithms. This time they have something to be smug about.

It is now possible to hit the publish button on your latest blog post and see the result within 30 seconds on Google. I am not exaggerating, I’ve just done it. I hit the publish button, copied the headline, fired up Google and pasted in the query. Hit search (yes, I know you can type enter to save time) and there’s my blog post in the number one spot (and number two indented which means they actually indexed one page and updated another). In 30 seconds flat, probably faster because I wasn’t rushing. Now how the hell do they do that and just how fast is Google?

The fact I took the headline and first two paragraphs from a news site and the original was ranked at number three is a bit embarrassing (for them), but of course I gave them a read more link to funnel the traffic their way.

I’ve been noticing the speed pick-up all month but now it’s just crazy fast. Think about it, an obscure little web site in the arsehole of nowhere coughs up a post and somewhere out there ravenous Google beasts instantly detect movement and pounce. They race the prey at light speed back to the Google hive, stash it in just the right spot and then bolt away to find the next catch. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365.25 days per year, for millions of web sites all over the planet.

You can’t help being impressed (or make that depressed if you are Yahoo or Bing).

Of course you can’t achieve this turnaround with just any web site. You need to work to prime the Google beasts so they notice when you twitch. If you hardly ever move then you eventually get ignored even if you resort to jumping up and down and waving your arms around.

Yes I know Google has been indexing pages faster and faster for a while now but something has definitely changed, something has picked up a gear. I’m aware I could run over to the face-slappingly smug blog run by that famous Google guy and get all the details but, as it happens, I’m not a fan boy by nature.

The “activity” thing must be for real then, because why else would they go to such lengths to provide performance this impressive? If you don’t know what the “activity” thing is, SEO bods and rebel (i.e. new product launch imminent) marketers are saying that Google is about to pay a whole lot more attention to freshness and social “buzz” at the expense of traditional on page SEO and link building.

Put another way, pull SENuke back to second gear and get yourself a blog and a Twitter account. Plus get yourself a cat, you’ll need something inane to talk about in the land of social media. Love it or not that’s where we’re going because that’s where Google is taking us – fast!

Okay… I’m hitting the publish button… NOW!