"Preview" Data Centers - do they exist?

[venti]

Are there any Google data centers that typically have a "preview" of what is to come on all other Google data centers? Something that we can keep an eye on to see what is coming down the line, even if it is just a day or two.

[tedster]

Not really - as in you can't count that the rankings you see on any IP will ever show up on google.com (.co.uk or whatever). Sometimes a given IP address is being used for experiments, according to Matt Cutts. Their purposes get shifted around all the time. Sometimes you can get a hint of some kind of shift that will show up later, but you can't count on it.

Most of all, you often can't find the exact current google.com SERPs anywhere by searching directly at an IP address. There's some extra sauce that gets splashed on at production time, apparently.

[BillyS]

Most of those tools are pretty much useless today. Even some of the more popular of sites seem to have given up.

[edited by: tedster at 4:16 am (utc) on Mar. 4, 2008]