The crazyness of updates and the user experience

When is Google JUST google?

[DarrylParker]

So every once in a while I poke my head into the Dominic Part X thread to see what you're all going on about and it's usually stuff like "wow, www.google.com is now mirroring www2" or "www is now mirroring -sj" etc etc...

And I'm wondering if WWW.GOOGLE.COM is constantly flipping around and slipping to different indexes and algos and backlink databases.... Is there ever a significant period of time that you can really talk about "THE" google search engine? I mean, it seems to me that when your average Joe/Jane Surfer goes to www.google.com, there's a huge number of totally different SERPS they could find for any one search phrase...

And it makes me wonder if "optomising for" (read "obsessing about") google SERPS is a posivite cost/benefit trade-off?

Darryl.

[chris_f]

Hi Darryl,

Google's results are getting updated almost constantly. Although, the major monthly update still causes a big buzz. Even though Google updates almostly constantly the changes are usually small compared to the size of it's index. After the update has settled you can be sure you'll only change one position before the next so it is stable enough for Joe and Jane surfer to get the same results.

Chris

[trillianjedi]

Daryl,

Usually that's not the case. The various datacentres all settle down after a while.

This is a strange one, because there are several different indexes depending on which datacentre you happen to hit off from www.

It's usually very stable. And well worth optimising for. In fact, not optimising for google would be suicidal for a site given that they have 80% of the search market.

TJ

[chris_f]

That's what I said. Just simpler ;).

Thanks
Chris