As we all knows, Google has launched new web indexing system called Caffeine. it provides 50% fresher results for web searches than the last index, and it is the largest collection of web content. Will Caffeine effect any Website's SEO position or Page Rank??? Because as i know, Caffeine has less dependency on no. of backlinks.
If your sites are in place now, chances are they passed the "Caffeine" test. The Big G rolled it out over the last couple of years from what I understood. They also recently received a patent on one of their linking algorithms which gives less weight to affiliated linking versus getting a link from a stranger.
If you want more info on this you can check out Google's BLog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/06/our-new-search-index-caffeine.html Code (markup):
Caffeine doesn't seem to be doing much for smaller websites. Still getting long crawl to index lags on most sites. I've noticed Google is starting to pay a bit more attention to fresh content, but I think that's the only change with caffeine that I'm seeing, and there are still many instances where crappy outdated info is outranking fresh stuff that I'm actually looking for. (Many searches for caffeine are popping up their Aug 2009 announcement that they will soon be rolling out caffeine instead of new info about what it does). It's tough to judge though because Google did a bunch of updates around that time including the Mayday update, so it's impossible to be sure. As far as I know, caffeine was strictly a speed thing, but I do think they included additional weight on new fresh content.