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claus - 1:17 am on Oct 4, 2004 (gmt 0)
Geez... 183 posts, two hours of reading, and it got me ...here? Although the Google capacity debate is interesting (and i see some signs that could be interpreted to support theories above, although i personally interpret them in an entirely different direction) i do not believe that this debate is on topic here. Even if Google had thousands of "indexes", this still does not change that the affected sites are indexed, in one index or another. As others have remarked, this is a question of ranking. The topic is Why does the 'Google Lag' exist? To answer that question, you would have to establish what the "Google Lag" is first. Then, of course, you would have to agree that it does exist. For simplicity, let's assume that it does exist. Then, what is it? The thing most people here tend to agree on is that:
...there are 10 types of people in this world...
Ie. "competing just got tougher - for new sites". Now, the question "Why does this exist?" could be discussed along the lines of eg.
There's been a few interesting suggestions already, imho. Personally, i lean towards the "sideeffect" theory, eg. that this is a symptom, not the real issue, or "just the tip of the iceberg", so to speak.
As to "Why", that's close to a no-brainer to me, as i'm convinced that it's all about improving the quality of search, believe it or not ;)
The "How" question is the more interesting one, imho - and it just might lead to another definition of what it really is. Just to make one point in that direction: "How could search be improved if new sites are ranking bad for a while?", or "What types of search improvements would introduce a lag/latency in the ranking of new sites?"
So, back on topic... i hope...