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This may or may not have relevance, but I believe that the following may be possible:
History: Google has fed AOL and Y! duplicate results that searchers would find on www version of G-for as long as I've been watching (about a year or so).
Recently: Y! announces purchase of Inktomi, then an "upgraded" search engine that, according to their own press release, is "designed to compete with Google."
What's happened since: G begins to feed results from what all admit is a 3-month old database to Y! and to AOL . Google results are cleaner and reflect the net as it is today-AOL and Y! are showing what was happening months ago.
Why AOL and not just Y!? It doesn't look as if Y! is being punished by Google for their recent manuevers. They are "just changing their algo".
Now, G results (on www) DIFFER from AOL and Y!. Better? All here seem to think so. So, a user who might be monkeying around on Yahoo! or AOL might just TRY google to see what google displays in SERPs. Now, different than their original search, more relevant, and at least subconciously, "better".
Now, suddenly, the www Google is the best search engine again, not just a carbon copy of AOL and Y!
In the next few days, Google may revert to "the old way", updating their database on www to reflect duplicate results on their engine, and this point may be disproven.
In the meantime, though, it might be a part of what they're up to.
If I ran Google, by the way, this theory would be implemented, as I think it makes the best sense in their business model.
(BTW, I have read every post since the now exhausted Dominic was a newborn baby, and I've seen Google Guy's ramblings as he's been trying to explain what is going on. I know what the "party line" is here on what's happening. I am adding this idea to the fray just to stir the stink a bit....)
AOL shows the new index for quite some time now with no bouncing at all between old and new data. Probably fed by the most stable Google datacenter so far.
The best sense in our business model is to provide the best possible results to our users and partners. We've been doing that for 4.5 years, it works pretty well, and we're going to keep doing that in the future.
