Updates and how they happen now from Matt Cutts

Discussion in 'Google' started by Barre Tire, Aug 10, 2007.

  1. #1
    From Matt Cutts blog just wanted to pass this on.

    When I joined Google in early 2000, we had a stretch where we didn’t update our index for 3-4 months or more. At the time, that wasn’t bad for a search engine; I remember one search engine around then that wasn’t updated for over a year. Starting in mid-2000, Google updated our index pretty much every month. People used to use the phase of the moon to predict timing of the next “Google Dance.”

    Now raise your hand if you remember “Update Fritz” from summer 2003. That was the Google Dance where Google switched from a monthly batch update to an incremental update. That means that our crawl/indexing team updated a fraction of our index daily or near-daily. Back then we had not only the normal crawl but also a “fresh crawl,” and if documents were in the fresh crawl then Google would sometimes show a date in our snippet.

    The Google crawl/indexing team has continued working hard, and several people have noticed Google’s index getting fresher and fresher. Now some documents can show up in minutes instead of hours or days.

    I’ve noticed that as search engines have gotter better (fresher, bigger, more relevant), people keep adjusting their expectations upwards. I can’t imagine waiting over a month for search engines to update their index with news events any more, but just a few years ago that’s how things worked. And it only takes a few encounters with a fresh index until you ratchet up your expectations. My previous mental model was “normally it takes a day or so to show up in many search engines,” but I had my own “Zoiks! That’s fast!” experience tonight, which I’ll describe for you.

    I was feed-grazing in Google Reader, as I am wont to do, when I saw a message that there was an update to Reader’s code for offline reading (Google Gears). In my experience, if I move on the the next feed, I lose that little message with the link to update the code (not sure why, but that’s a different post). So I click the link and update my code for offline reading.

    In the process, I lost the post that I was currently reading, which was Rich Skrenta’s post about Persai. I wasn’t done reading the post, so what do I do? I go to Google and search for [skrenta blog] so that I can find Skrenta’s blog and finish reading the post.

    And what did I see in my search results? The snippet from Skrenta’s blog was showing the post that he did at 7:54 p.m. Pacific time. It was about 8:44 p.m. Pacific time when I did the search. So from Rich hitting the “Post” button to me being able to see it in Google’s main search index was well under an hour.

    More http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/

    Hope it helps ......
     
    Barre Tire, Aug 10, 2007 IP
    Jim4767 likes this.
  2. usasportstraining

    usasportstraining Notable Member

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    #2
    Cool, thanks for the find!
     
    usasportstraining, Aug 10, 2007 IP
  3. Zanswer

    Zanswer Peon

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    #3
    Thanks. It is an interesting read. If you follow the link he posted another blog today that has a recap including his powerpoint slides at the WorldCamp 2007. Lots of information too.
     
    Zanswer, Aug 10, 2007 IP
  4. mhmdkhamis

    mhmdkhamis Well-Known Member

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    #4
    great notes

    thanks
     
    mhmdkhamis, Aug 10, 2007 IP
  5. webcosmo

    webcosmo Notable Member

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    #5
    interesting. thats why I love dp, so much to learn.
     
    webcosmo, Aug 10, 2007 IP
  6. vicdigi

    vicdigi Banned

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    #6
    Valuable news and info always found on DP - thanks
     
    vicdigi, Aug 10, 2007 IP
  7. MoneyNing

    MoneyNing Peon

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    #7
    Well, that's only assuming the author actually hits POST right after he's done writing it. He could've scheduled the post way ahead, which could mean that even though it didn't show up on the first page, there is a chance google bots would grab it.
     
    MoneyNing, Aug 10, 2007 IP
  8. Tearabite

    Tearabite Prominent Member

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    #8
    it's amazing how SE's have changed in only a few years.. I was noticing just the other day that some of my blog posts were indexed and searchable in the index in UNDER 20 minutes!
     
    Tearabite, Aug 10, 2007 IP
  9. trichnosis

    trichnosis Prominent Member

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    #9
    it looks good.

    can you write the exact url of this info pls?
     
    trichnosis, Aug 10, 2007 IP
  10. Barre Tire

    Barre Tire Peon

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    #10
    I only have the url I posted you will need to scroll to find it since it is a blog..
     
    Barre Tire, Aug 11, 2007 IP
  11. Barre Tire

    Barre Tire Peon

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    #11
    Barre Tire, Aug 13, 2007 IP
  12. zangief

    zangief Well-Known Member

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    #12
    Imo if you look for information from google side , you have to read the foot notes , other information they provide is what they want us to learn.The index is updated very often but the ranks are not updated that fast.
     
    zangief, Aug 14, 2007 IP
  13. websys

    websys Active Member

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    #13
    had read this long before , as i read it on google reader ;) and also tried the example he gave :)
     
    websys, Aug 14, 2007 IP
  14. WatchOut

    WatchOut Guest

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    #14
    Interesting read, thanks for sharing :)
     
    WatchOut, Aug 14, 2007 IP
  15. jbladeus

    jbladeus Peon

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    #15
    so should we expect real time index updates within the next decade?
     
    jbladeus, Aug 14, 2007 IP
  16. flippers.be

    flippers.be Peon

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    #16
    Indeed amazing how everything evolves so fast..
    I noticed that posts on my blog are indexed very fast.. nice way to promote an article at my site. I submit a new article to my site and write in my blog about it.. :)
     
    flippers.be, Aug 14, 2007 IP