Google is the 'Big Daddy'
Date Published 27/01/2006 - Click here for more recent news
A quick heads-up for Google-watchers on the latest bit of clicknology by the search engine behemoth. After having just seen Yahoo run up the white flag in signalling its defeat at the hands of Google in the searching game and the Seattle Seahawks not winning The Superbowl - I guess the year couldn't have started much better in the Googleplex.
By early February or March of this year The Big 'G' may be deploying The Big 'D' data center, containing new code for examining and sorting the Web and totally revamping how Google works.
At the same time it is allegedly going to address some long-standing search 'issues' like:-
- canonicalization (nothing to do with cardinals and smoke coming out of chimneys, but basically a formal way of describing site naming conventions)
- illicit (302) redirects.
If you want to have an advance peek at the new Big 'D' system and its indexing - Google have even issued couple of test IP addresses:-
-
66.249.93.104
-
64.233.179.104.
Is this going to be another "Easy", "Easy"...... victory for Big Daddy? With their recent track record I for one wouldn't bet against it.
NB1: You can read more detail about Google's "Big Daddy" - in this article by Brian Quinton.
NB2: If on the other hand you'd like to read about the well known British wrestler "Big Daddy" (who is pictured above) - have look at his biog in the Obsessed with Wrestling website.
NB3: Just in case you thought that the Big Daddy story was all over in the first round - here's a link below to the blog of senior Google engineer (and all-round 'good egg') Matt Cutts who reports that they've still got a few licks of paint to apply to that 'little' project. If you click on the link it'll take you directly to Matt's blog, which is always good read anyway.
Bigdaddy status update: almost there
22 March 2006 Matt Cutts (Blog)
We’re down to just 1-2 data centers left in the switchover to Bigdaddy. It’s possible that the Bigdaddy switchover will be complete in the next week or two. Just as a reminder, Bigdaddy is a software upgrade to Google’s infrastructure that provides the framework for a lot of improvements to core search quality in the coming months (smarter redirect handling, improved canonicalization, etc.). A team of dedicated people has worked very hard on this change; props to them for the code, sweat, and hours they’ve put into it.
April 2006:
Here at EASIserv.com we're starting to see some new results from Google as they've now apparently finished their BigDaddy update. Maybe as a reward for keeping us all on tenterhooks for so long - the Big 'G' kindly dropped-in a Toolbar PR update last week as a tit-bit for all of us.
In an April 2006 article by Matthew Coers he gives a good over-review as to what's gone on and at one point states: "Over the last two or three weeks, many website owners have seen traffic to their sites from Google fluctuate quite a bit. This is normal for algorithm updates – as the index is updated on one data center, a site will change positions. The fluctuations occur because the index in the new data center is not completely built, and therefore a site may be placed artificially high or low until all the data is brought into equilibrium."
The EASIserv.com experience is that our own website's home page PR4 has stayed the same, although we've lost some IBLs in the flux - but some of our lower-level pages have stepped-up to PR5 for no reason that we can readily identify. Our contact page for example (which is not exactly our most exciting) is a PR5. Elsewhere, in at least 2 other cases we've got brand new client websites who've come screaming in from PR0 to PR5, first time at bat - go figure. Anyway, as we've come to learn over time with Google they'll do what they want to do for the 'greater good' and we'll see how it all pans out in the end.
PS: Whilst all this 'hoopla' was going on at Mountain View, the folks at Yahoo and MSN were moving their furniture around too - but as is usual these days, nobody much noticed.
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