Google and Its Latest Update: Jagger

Webmaster Corner

As most of you already know, Google is currently in the process of updating all its indexes and servers. The update was called Jagger! Jagger was done in three separate phases: Jagger 1, Jagger 2 and Jagger 3.

Jagger 1 and Jagger 2 have already finished. Jagger 1 started on around 10/16/2005 and completed on around 11/07/2005. Jagger 2 started on around 10/27/2005 and completed around 11/6/2005. Meaning that on average each update takes 15-20 days.

Now Jagger 3 is in the process. Jagger 3 already started around 11/04/2005 and is still working! Taken that the average was 15-20 days, this update will last until 19-24 this month (November 2005).



How does the update work?

Google has more than one datacenter. Updates start at one datacenter where changes will be mostly visible and then start propagating to other datacenters. As an example, the Jagger3 started on the datacenter 66.102.9.104 and it started migrating over time to other datacenters.

Therefore, during an update, Google datacenters get out of sync and might report different results for the same keywords until the update is complete and all datacenters are synchronized.



Some tips It looks like the main purpose of the update was to remove spam sites. These are sites employing 'black' methods to try to rank high in search engines. The following are some examples of these methods:

- Writing hidden text using CSS!

- Writing hidden text which has the same color as the background color of the page!

- Generating spammy doorway domains that have irrelevant words just to attract traffic

- Spamming blogs and guestbooks with your links



Some words on Google PageRank

Google PageRank or PR is numeric value assigned by Google to pages that represents how important a page is. The more important and known your pages are, the better PR they will get. PR is a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is an unknown page for Google and 10 is the highest PR that can be assigned.

The latest PR update was done shortly before or during the latest Jagger1.



Tools of the trade: Here are some tools that can be used to see your progress: - Webmaster Corner Forum: http://www.webmater-corner .com/

Forum dealing with all aspects of site optimization and marketing

- Google position checker: http://www.webmaster-corner.com/services/google-position -check.php

Use this tool to find out your rankings on different datacenters of Google

- Google Page rank: http ://www.webmaster-corner.com/services/pagerank.php

Use this tool to discover your Google Page Rank (PR).

About the author:

Webmaster corner forum is the place for webmasters and programmers to gather and discuss IT related topics such as search engine optimization, general business and marketing techniques, and web design and programming issues