The self-storage industry is urging companies to get a dose of Caffeine when it comes to boosting online search results for their business.

This week, search engine giant Google revealed that its new, improved web indexing system – known as Caffeine – has been live for the past few days, with performance levels that are at least 50 per cent more efficient.

Under the old indexing system, Google searches were sometimes plagued by the long delays between websites posting updates and this new information appearing on the search engine’s results. Self-storage firms were among those disadvantaged by this, as it meant that the newest information on their websites or blog entries was not always available to potential customers.

Caffeine will hopefully change all that, thanks to the sheer amount of computer power it’s harnessing. It uses nearly 100 million gigabytes of electronic storage and adds hundreds of thousands of gigabytes worth of information to its database each day.

For self-storage companies, quick access to the latest updates can be very important, because the newest content on these companies’ sites tends to be items such as discount vouchers and special offers, many of which are time limited.

There is no shortage of online interest for self-storage companies, insisted Michael Schulman of StorageClicks.com. During a presentation at Massachusetts Self Storage Association’s Northeast 2010 Trade Show, he revealed that in the US alone there are 823,000 web searches for “self storage” every month.

And a recent article for Inside Self-Storage magazine by online self storage marketplace site SpareFoot.com’s co-founder Chuck Gordon, many self-storage firms obtain nearly half of all their customers through the internet.

A new survey by Access Self Storage has indicated that men are more likely to keep treasured items of sentimental value than women.

The firm polled both male and female students – a group most likely to use self-storage units – and asked them which three things they would wish to keep forever. Over two thirds of male respondents (67 per cent) said that they would want to hold on to photos of their friends and family, compared to just under half of all women (49 per cent).

Some 24 per cent of men said that they would also like to keep a special gift forever, compared to only 11 per cent of female respondents.

The ratio was reversed when 36 per cent of women said that they would like to keep a favoured item of clothing, compared to just 9 per cent of men. Of these items, 13 per cent of women opted for a favourite pair of jeans.

When quizzed on their favourite items of technology, 37 per cent of men said that they would like to keep their computer, compared to 23 per cent of women. However, the differences between the sexes narrowed when it came to the crunch. When both men and women were asked to choose between keeping their laptop and mobile phone or all of their furniture, 81 per cent of men and 78 per cent of women chose the technology.

Access Self Storage spokeswoman Jill Martin said: “The end of the summer term is the time of year when many students are moving back home and are considering the things they want to keep but cant easily transport, and those they want to throw away.”