Last month Matt Cutts mentioned that there was a new datacenter Google was testing, however he didn't get into too many details about what it was or why they were testing it.
Today, Matt unveiled 'BigDaddy' (the name they gave it) in his blog. In it he explains what BigDaddy is and isn't.
For one thing, BigDaddy ISN'T a new algorithm. But it is a new foundation for Google. In other words, this new datacenter contains new code that will be rolled out to the other datacenters in the coming months to help improve Google.
While some are reporting that they are seeing different results on the datacenter Matt insists that is more a case of the changing infrastructure than an actual algorithm shift which we normally associate with a Google update.
There have been a couple of interesting bits of Google news in the past few days. These announcements could dramatically change how search is perceived on the Internet.
The first is the huge Google/AOL deal. For $1 billion Google earns a mere 5% stake in AOL. But there are other non-quantifiables which Google also gets as part of the deal.
For one, as one of the largest shareholders Google retains the rights of other shareholders including helping decide if and when AOL could be sold.
So it's that time of year again. The time of year when I look forward to determine what I see as the big trends in search for 2006.
And like every year you will find some that you agree with and some you may not. But before you start criticizing my prediction skills, take a look at last years predictions to see how close I was. Even I was impressed with myself.
So let's take a look at what I see the trends of 2006 will be.
There has been a handy webmaster/sem tool at Yahoo! for some time. One that is probably the most helpful tool in helping you understand how Yahoo! sees your site.
The tool is called Site Explorer and today I'm going to show you what it can do for you.
There has been a handy webmaster/sem tool at Yahoo! for some time. One that is probably the most helpful tool in helping you understand how Yahoo! sees your site.
The tool is called Site Explorer and today I'm going to show you what it can do for you.
Google's recent Jagger update has caused a lot of trouble for many webmasters. Although Google tried to eliminate spam pages from its search results, many spam-free web sites have also been hit by this ranking algorithm update.
During Google's update, MSN.com temporarily had a PageRank of 2. Even the spam-free blogs of some Google employees were removed from Google's index (they have been restored in the meantime).
It's obvious that Google had some problems with this ranking algorithm update and that not everything went the way it should.
The internet has been an interesting place over the last month for people dealing in search engine optimization. Let's discuss Google. When Google makes sufficient changes to be considered an update, just like a huge brewing storm, it gets named. Jagger was Google's latest update. Updates are basically changes to the ways search engines rank web sites. Most usually website owners see drastic changes in rankings whether for good or bad. Jagger was the biggest update ever to take place on a major search engine.
Google Sitemaps is another way for webmasters to inform and direct Google's crawlers. Google Sitemaps does not help you to improve your rankings on Google. It is just another way to invite Google's spider.
You can find further information about the basic features of this service in the Google Sitemaps article we published in June.
It's been almost 6 months since I last sat down to take a look at how search is doing. At that time I was looking for relevant and timely information on a Tsunami that happened off the California coastline.
Prior to that I had written articles on search relevancy in which I questioned how well the search engines were doing with helping users find answers to their problems.
So I thought I'd address the issue again, since it's been a while to give you my thoughts and feelings on how search is improving.
Let me tell you that in the past 6 to 12 months I'm almost exclusively using Google now. In past articles I said I preferred Google but did use Yahoo! and even Ask Jeeves but now it's all Google.
A few days ago, Google released a new service with the name . Google Analytics is basically a rebranded version of Urchin, a web analytics service that Google purchased in March.