Google Dance
Google launches a new tool every few weeks. But Google is not in the dance industry as of now yet.
The term "Google Dance" rather describes a period when a major index update of the Google search engine is being implemented.
Google is constantly crawling the web and incorporates its latest findings into its rankings. During a Google Dance, though, all Web sites do get revisited in a very short period of time and this can result in the wild swings in your rankings. A Google Dance can last up to three to five days.
Trying to fix in engine while it is running...
A normal Web site would go offline during a time of updates or overhaul. Google doesn't have that option. It is very important for Google to present reliable and relevant results at all times and therefore the algorithm updates pose a major challenge for the search engine.
How do I find out if the Google Dance is on?
The Dance can easily be identified by significant changes in search results, and by an updating of Google's cache of all indexed pages. Google has a number of different servers all over the world.
Some of them can be accessed via the following addresses (as of January 2006)
www.google.com (of course)
www2.google.com
www3.google.com
216.239.37.99
216.239.39.99
216.239.41.99
216.239.51.99
216.239.37.104
216.239.41.104
216.239.37.147
64.233.161.98
64.233.161.99
64.233.161.104
64.233.161.105
If you go to Google.com and do a search you will see a number of search results in the blue bar on top of the page. If you go to any of the other addresses listed above and see a different number of total search results you know that the dance is on. If all numbers are identical again the dance is over.
Notes
Other search engines go trough the same procedure as well. So there is a Yahoo Dance, MSN Dance etc… Google is more important than any other search engine from the online marketer’s perspective and therefore gets more attention for its updates as well.
Search engine marketers are not too fond of the Google Dance because it usually results in a number of calls from customers who are panicking because they thing that their listings have been blacklisted or were removed for some other unexplainable reason.
As of now there are no counseling classes for distressed search engine marketers offered by Google yet.
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