What has happened to Google DC's?

DCs down and searches timing out

[Hissingsid]

I'm finding half of the DCs down, searches timing out after 60 seconds.

Is the current state of the DCs part of the normal cycle?

Best wishes

Sid

[Brett_Tabke]

Working top notch here.

[coconubuck]

No problem on my end, either.

[rfgdxm1]

I can confirm what Hissingsid posted is so at my end. Only -ex, -in and -cw are reachable. And, routing through a proxy to come at the servers from a much different part of the world, and another IP, shows the same thing. Something is up at Google.

[drewls]

I've noticed quite a bit of slowness from here.

[Kirby]

Only 4 DCs and slow in SoCal.

[GoogleGuy]

I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of the www-xx.google.com aliases (like www-sj and www-fi) go away, at least for a while. The data centers are still there, but I think they were going to take out the aliases for a bit. I'd use www, www2, or www3 instead.

Sorry that I haven't been around as much to answer questions lately--I've been really busy with a project.

[gerwin]

No slow things on this end (.nl)... :-)

[GoogleGuy]

Yah, if you try to go to a DNS alias that we've removed, it will just kinda sit there while it tries to resolve a hostname that doesn't exist. Regular users would never notice--just a few SEOs. :)

[lazurus]

I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of the www-xx.google.com aliases (like www-sj and www-fi) go away, at least for a while

Hmmm, why would that be?

[rfgdxm1]

>Hmmm, why would that be?

Makes me suspect that something is cooking at Google. I just saw some *hugely* different SERPs for some very uncompetitive keywords that freshbot activity is minimal. I can only assume I hit one of those "hidden" datacenters briefly. I had thought a dance had started. However, it now occurs to me that Google may be using some of these datacenters for test indexes. Test indexes they want to hide from the world; or at least the SEOs of the world.

Added. Dang, I wish I had screen snapshot software. MASSIVE difference on a SERP on www2 and www3, with www being the old index. Somebody please confirm I'm not crazy. ;)

[lazurus]

...or perhaps Google's popularity no longer dictates the running of these data centers.

[BigDave]

Yeah rfg, some mighty big changes have been popping up every so often. I have also seen them on www. And I rather like the new options, at least as far as my own sites.

Unfortunately I did not get a chance to try out any real searches before it switched back. Did you get a chance to try out any other than in your own category?

[rfgdxm1]

>Unfortunately I did not get a chance to try out any real searches before it switched back. Did you get a chance to try out any other than in your own category?

Nope. However, I did manage to save one SERP on www and www2 to a text file to prove if anyone thinks I didn't see this. This is a very uncompetitive SERP, and the pages on it rarely, if ever, change. Something is afoot at Google.

[steveb]

"I've been really busy with a project."

<conjuring up fond dreams of some Localrank>

[Arty2003]

Well, there is something going on for certain.

That begins around 17-18th. Google cache reverted back few weeks, along with SERP using keywords in those pages.

After two days, cache slowly started to return. Right now all cache for my sites back to normal (their last cached state) along with my ranks & keywords.

But again, I don't have any bot visits since 18th (still). I was getting at least two hit's a day before.

[agent10]

my thoughts are that maybe the dance is already going on through the datacentres offline so that this time any glitches can be resolved before they read them here!

[elmarpanzenberger]

There's something going on for shure. Since a couple of days the datacenters are not reachable randomly and the serps change very strongly.
A 'site: ****.com -asdf' search to look after how many pages are indexed from a certain site can give you absolutely different results quite on every search - probably depending on which DC you reach.

[napoleon bona part 2]

5 DCs are down. Serps are changing like crazy for my keywords. Every time I hit 'refresh', the serps change dramatically. What's amazing is that not everyone is seeing the serps changing. Something is certainly cooking.

Other weird thing that I am noticing is that the links from links.htm or similar pages are not showing up when doing a 'link:' search, even if they have a PR > 4. But if the 'links' word in the url is either prefixed or suffixed with some other word (abc-links.htm, linksacb34.htm etc.) then the links are very much being credited. May be this is also affecting the serps.

[pontifex]

A simple answer for the fast changes of the SERPS you see could be the result of load balancing techniques like "Round Robin".

GoogleGuy said loud and clear: the datacenters are there, but the outside direct addressing is gone.

If I would be in their situation, I would install a Round Robin DNS entry and watch the load of the datacenters closly, while I kick out 1,2 or 3 datacenters... that is almost a live check of the minimum amount of datacenters I need, without risking the world to be offline.

my .02
P!

[znakedwrx]

All data centers are alive :)

Only aliases & their usual ip has been removed/filtered BUT!

[216.239.59.99...]
[216.239.33.99...]
[216.239.39.99...]
[216.239.41.99...]
[216.239.37.99...]
[216.239.51.99...]
[216.239.53.99...]

will do a trick :)

Maybe some center will not accept .99 but you can use .98 or .101 and it will still work fine:)

Cheers

[drewls]

Yeah, but I'm seeing results that are not coming from any of those datacenters. Something else is going on here and they're not letting us in on the party.

[jtbell]

I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of the www-xx.google.com aliases (like www-sj and www-fi) go away, at least for a while

Hmmm, why would that be?

Perhaps Google has decided that they're wasting too much bandwidth on obsessve webmasters who constantly check all the data centers to compare their results. ;-)

[BlueSky]

I was doing some searches today looking for a very specialized item. Every time I clicked on show me hidden results or increase the display from 10 to 100 the total amount kept changing. This may have been happening before, but the amount of results returned was so small it was really noticable to me today.

How exactly does Google's search work? I thought perhaps it directed people to the nearest datacenter for every single search. After seeing the totals change so much today, I now think you get routed to different datacenters based on load balancing. I guess that's okay but boy when the results are really low it's gets kinda confusing. On the first screen, it would say like 200 total results then selecting display 100 the total changed to like 150. Then when select show hidden results the total would drop again to like 80. I couldn't tell if pages on the same site were being dropped or whole sites were.

[steveb]

I don't know what is going on with allinanchor: but it is serving up some of the worst dreck I've seen. (Serps are fine.) Perhaps it is reflecting now simply actual volume of anchor text. If it is, it certainly is an argument for cranking the anchor text value in the algorithm down a few dozen notches.

[GoogleGuy]

I have to admit that I don't really pay much attention to allinanchor: these days..

[IITian]

If it is, it certainly is an argument for cranking the anchor text value in the algorithm down a few dozen notches.

I do hope that anchor text is devalued. Last week I got one more link from an academic site, and the professor put my name as the anchor text! I am not trying to come up #1 for my name or 'click here.'

[TheDave]

Yeah I noticed I was only getting about half responding a few days ago. Anyone got a current list of known datacenters by their www-xx names? My list is:

www-ex
www-kr
www-mc
www-va
www-dc
www-fi
www-ab
www-in
www-zu
www-cw
www-gv

Another thing I've noticed, when you can't get to a datacenter, google's error page requests to run an ActiveX control, which I found that a bit strange. Anyone know what it is (I'm not game to allow it to run)?

edit- just tried doing a search across the datacenters and only got 2 responding. Also, the active x control was gone (it's been about a week since I last searched across the datacenters)

[AthlonInside]

Anyone can separate and build a list fo working datacenters and non-working datacenters?

[sjp1]

##have i posted this on the wrong forum?#

I just wanted some help on the problem below?

Sorry if my terminology is lacking.

i am totally stumped with what is going on with Google?

a few days ago (i'm in the UK), both the .com and .co.uk sites were slow at first , now totally inaccessable? I have resorted to using different IP addresses to get the english version?

Got no viruses, no trojans & no spyware?

So, is this really Googles fault?

[edited by: sjp1 at 10:22 am (utc) on Jan. 23, 2004]