Google is testing out a new revision of its dominant internet search technology. It’s dubbed “Caffeine” and the company is asking for feedback on how its results compare to today’s returns.

Google calls the change a revolution in what happens behind that little search box, but says that even power users aren’t likely to see much of a difference in results right now.

A large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. 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 new infrastructure sits “under the hood.”

What does that mean in English? It means Google’s spiders, which traverse the web via links to map out its content, are likely faster and smarter. Google has probably reconfigured its backend, where it stores an index of the web on thousands of hard drives on thousands of computers linked together to create a single file system, which it uses to figure out which pages are the most relevant.

Quick tests show that the new engine is significantly faster than the old one, about 20 percent faster on average and sometimes as much as 75 percent faster. At the same time, the new index seems to include a far greater number of pages.

For example, a search in the old system for “horse” looked through 187 million pages and in the new system, scanned 208 million, returning results in .45 and .37 seconds, respectively.

Notably, images feature much less prominently in the new version.

Let us know in comments if you find differences. If you want to report bad results to Google, do a search in the sandbox , and click on the “Dissatisfied? Help us improve” link at the bottom of the page. Just mention the word “caffeine” to let the company know your feedback is about the new version.

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