Do data centers mean anything any more?

They seem to be stable but actual results are jumping all over

[annej]

I'm still seeing the results jumping all over for one word searches yet when I look at data centers using a popular data center watch tool most of them are stable with a good result for my key word.

I don't know if this is a hopeful sign for me or not?

Any help on understanding all this would be really helpful.

[annej]

Maybe I need to restate my question. What do the other data centers mean to us now? I used to see them as showing trends or changes that would eventually settle into results that would show across the board.

Do the tell us anything now or have we quit having data center watch type threads because they no longer predict anything?

[wheelie34]

annej, I think because Google is in permanent flux now, there's not likely to be a "rollout" of new data, that's how I understand G now.

For the last couple of months I have noticed weekends are when a change seems to happen, new pages appear, SERP changes etc.

Reseller has been quiet, it was his baby the DC watch threads.

[trakkerguy]

I'm still seeing changes in serps I watch showing up on different datacenters, then eventually making it to google.com. But seems slower, and not as predictable as used to be.

Last big improvement for me was on all datacenters on a tool I use for a couple of weeks before showing on google.com.

Do changes often show on different datacenters, and never make it to google.com?

[reseller]

Hey wheelie34

Reseller has been quiet, it was his baby the DC watch threads.

In fact I still do data centers watching. But I'm taking now into account new factors:

- The changes on DCs are happening in very speedy manner to the extent that I can't follow the migration of changes from one DC or one group of DCs to the others. That might be some of the effect of deploying BigDaddy new infrastructure (software update) which allow for speedy data pushes.

- The DC I watch doesn't need to reflect its IP number on the popular data centers watching tools. It happens that the DC in question was just taken out of rotation and accordingly the results I see might belong to other DC.

- I keep in mind what Matt Cutts said in one of his recent videos:

Data center comments

And you know, the whole notion of watching data centers is going to get harder and harder for individuals going forward, because number one we have so much stuff launching in various ways. I have seen weekly once launchings where there are double digit number of things, and these are things that are under the hood. So, strictly quality. They are not changing the UI or anything like that. And so, if you are not making a specific search in Russian or Chinese, you might not notice the difference. But it goes to show that we are always going to be rolling out different things and at different data centers you might have slightly different data.

The other reason why its not worth watching data centers is because there is an entire set of ip addresses and if you are a super-dooper gung-ho SEO, you’ll know, you know, oh, 72.2.14.whatever. But that IP address will typically go, to one data center. But that’s not a gaurantee. If that one data center comes out of rotation, we are going to do something else to it, we are going to actually change the hardware infrastructure. and everything I have been talking about so far is software infrastructure. So if you take that datacenter out of rotation for some reason, that ip address will then point to a completely different data center. So, the currency, the ability to really compare changes and talk to a fellow data center watcher and say, “What do you see at 72.2.14.whatever” is really pretty limited.

Transcription of Matt Cutts #15: Data center comments [caydel.com]

Of course I disagree politely with Matt regarding watching the DCs. I think its worth watching the data centers, keeping in mind the factors I mentioned above. ;-)

[reseller]

Hi Folks,

First off, pls note the date of my above post (July 24, 2007) where I mentioned:

- The changes on DCs are happening in very speedy manner to the extent that I can't follow the migration of changes from one DC or one group of DCs to the others. That might be some of the effect of deploying BigDaddy new infrastructure (software update) which allow for speedy data pushes.

Today (July 26, 2007) David Degrelle wrote a very interesting and relevant post :

Then comes a meeting with a reliable source which tells me between two other very interesting things, that during a official visit in Mountain View in Googleplex, an Google engineer speaks to him more freely and indicates that Google is from now able to recompute the whole of the data base of the engine in 14 minutes! My intuition then starts to be transformed gradually into conviction.

Google calculates SERPs in 14 minutes and goes real time! [e-sema.com]

Very interesting remarks indeed. ;-)

[edited by: tedster at 9:01 pm (utc) on July 26, 2007]
[edit reason] fix charset troubles [/edit]

[annej]

Much to read about and think about here. Thanks everyone and especially our data center expert, reseller.

[g1smd]

Google has taken at least half a dozen of their old Class-C blocks of IP addresses offline in the last few months; and added many new ones in new ranges in their place. I guess that is the start of the hardware change that was mentioned above.

[Jon_King]

>>regarding watching the DCs

It's like watching pistons in an auto engine and trying to determine the next turn of the driver.