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While I haven't been able to yet locate the person who coined the term Google Dance (I'm sure they'll be crawling out of the woodwork now), the phrase causes a sense of nervous anticipation in certain types of people on the 'net. Those affected are usually known as SEOs (search engine optimizers). Also interesting to note is that it's usually those new to the scene as the more seasoned veterans know there's nothing to do but wait, so they work on their sites instead of surfing message boards talking about the update.
Although I consider myself a hardcore Googlephile, I have to admit I'd never heard of the
Google Dance until around July of last year. It was then when, fed up with current corporate policies and politics, I began directing my energies to my websites again, something I'd neglected for a year or so. After launching a new site last July, I became serious about it again and began to dig on the 'net for better ways to market and increase traffic.
In the past, I'd been caught in the trap of the 'free-for-all' links, naively thinking that if I added my site to as many of these as I could my traffic would suddenly soar through the roof. As anyone who has any knowledge of free-for-all link services (aka link farms), it did not help at all and even hindered me a little.
Last year, though, I stumbled on the Google News forum at WebmasterWorld and quickly began devouring the vast deposits of SEO information I found there. I'd never heard of a SEO before, but as I lurked and read, I learned a lot.
For instance, as is often the case
with 'hackers,' there are good SEOs who play by the rules and also SEOs who are into the 'black arts.' Negative SEO work includes techniques like cloaking, using hidden text, and other spammy methods to try to trick the search engines into ranking them high in the listings. On the other hand, good SEOs are interested in making their pages as bot friendly as they can without using deceptive and devious methods. It's a fine line.
After studying for a while, it finally began to dawn on my how much
damage I'd done a year previous by signing up for all of the free-for-all
lists. Luckily, though, none of them were showing up in my backlinks
anymore, and I didn't seem to have any penalty attached to my domain. Being conscious about Googlebot (what it likes and doesn't like) made me cautious when promoting my website. Somehow I got lucky in attracting the famed Google freshbot and was able to experience a fairly cool everflux - but that's another article.
I digress. Let's get back to the Google Dance. What is it? Simply stated, it's a period of time when all of the Google servers in all the Google datacenters are synching up. You see, with that many servers, they can't really just flip a switch whenever they re-index the web. Instead, the 'new' results are loaded on a single server, which slowly makes its way from one server to another.
Some enterprising people eventually figured out that a www2.google.com and www3.google.com existed. And not only that, but during a certain time of the month, they showed different SERPs (search engine results pages)! Hence all the hoopla about the dance each month. (And no, the Google Update isn't started here).
Google doesn't officially announce the start of its updates, but you can tell when the dance starts if the 'backlinks' (the number of sites pointing to an URL) for yahoo.com are different on www, www2, and www3. To test this yourself, go to Google and type in 'link:yahoo.com' and you should get the total number of results near the top. Next, go to www2.google.com and repeat the process. When the mass update begins, the number of results on the three servers will be different for a while.
During the dance, people are known to get a little goofy, nervous or both. I guess if my whole business depended on search engines sending me traffic, I would concentrate on putting my eggs in other baskets. It's somewhat amusing (in a weird way) to read the WebmasterWorld Google Dance thread and see people freaking out if their site disappears from the index or slips in ranking. Also interesting (especially the last few months) is to see GoogleGuy (a Google employee who posts anonymously at WebmasterWorld but was verfied as legit by the people who run the site) offer advice and hints.
I have to admit, I've found myself once or twice at one Google Dance Tool site or another to see how my pet phrases were doing and if I'd managed to keep my #1 spots for vanity searches.
What starts as a dance ends as a new index for all the Google servers in all the Google datacenters. As last September showed us, though,
sometimes another dance starts after the Google Dance, a dance where people express their dislike of Google's efforts toward a more searchable (usable) web. The furor over the September 2002 update was enough that it got a mention on both Wired and "that other site."
Will the natives get restless and start a new dance for a new bot on the block? Only time will tell.
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