Does anyone know when the next Google Dance will take place?
I'm really anxious to find out when it will take place, as I have a few certain important sites that have quite a few linkbacks from high PR sites.

I know that the last update was about a month ago, and then I found out the next day only.

I would appreciate any hints on when the next update will take place.

Thanks,
Lorand

there isn't like a calendar you can check. you just wait and see.

It used to be regular and very precise, on a 4 week basis, but in the last few months it seems it's just chaotic and almost random.

I also got a hint from GoogleGuy (not sure you heard of him), that the next update is scheduled for August the 5th.

Hope he's right..

There really aren't "Google dances" like there used to be. They're now continually crawling and continually updating the index. What's being called an "update" now isn't what it used to be; it's primarily a significant algorithmic adjustment that results in changes to how pages are ranked -- while it used to mean a significant change in which pages are indexed; along with, usually, algorithmic changes.

As for "hints from GoogleGuy," he's said as much several times. :)

Yes, Jay, I totally agree with you, GoogleGuy rarely gives specific info on the insights of Google, but I guess he's pretty much entitled to do so and he's fairly right.
As google announces an algorithm change in time, I was wondering just about the good ol' days (one of them beeing caught on WHT last month if I recall correctly) when someone announced "Yesterday Google updated, how did you do?"...

Wouldn't be nice to know of this updates about a week in advance? :)

Originally posted by Lorand M
As google announces an algorithm change in time, I was wondering just about the good ol' days (one of them beeing caught on WHT last month if I recall correctly) when someone announced "Yesterday Google updated, how did you do?"... Hmm... I've never seen Google "announce an algorithm change." That'd be nice!

Unless it was a thread I didn't see, that probably was referring to a PageRank update, not an index update of the "google dance" variety. Google continuing to recalculate PageRank (as it's displayed on the toolbar anyway) every few weeks, and of course because PR influences rankings that itself results in some shifting around. There was a significant PageRank recalculation a couple of weeks ago.

But there hasn't been a "dance" or an update on the scale that led to that term being used in several months.

The situation evolved over time: it used to be that Google spidered heavily about once a month, and used the information from that "deep crawl" to refresh the whole index about a month later. A little more than year or so ago, they started using googlebot from a new set of IPs throughout the month independent of the deep crawls. Data from that activity was used to build what came to be called the "fresh index," which supplemented the main one and started to introduce changes in between the monthly update. The transition was completed, then, by replacing the deep crawls with continual spidering and a continual refreshing of the database.

The monthly update pattern ended with the June 2003 update. There wasn't an update of that type again until the following November; that was the infamous update dubbed "Florida." Most observers don't see anything that's happened after that to be an update of the scope or type of what we used to see -- though some people do still use the term "update" whenever they see significant shifts in rankings. Again, those aren't really updates: they're either the result of algorithmic changes, or they're the result of a PageRank recalculation.

While it was possible to come fairly close to predicting the old style updates because they followed a somewhat regular pattern, there's no way to predict when changes of the type that now are done will happen. In fact it appears (and GoogleGuy has said) that Google is making algorithmic adjustments every couple of weeks. Some of those are minor and are hardly noticed, some are more noticeable -- and some of those are inaccurately termed "updates" by some people.

Well Jay, that was some usefull information, we can only wait and hope that Google will resume it's pattern in updating/refreshing the database, altough it's a long shot just to hope that...

Anyway, thanks for the info, much appreciated.

lately its spuratic, from my expierance anyway

Originally posted by JayC

Google continuing to recalculate PageRank (as it's displayed on the toolbar anyway) every few weeks,

sorry if i sound stupid here, but they only update their PR every few weeks?

Ya, but these people are trying to say that the updates are becoming more irregular unlike before.

It just happened.

Originally posted by blackdog
It just happened.

What is updated?

Originally posted by bluzman32
Ya, but these people are trying to say that the updates are becoming more irregular unlike before.

I hope your kidding cause I havent seen any changes anywhere.

Originally posted by iGravity
What is updated? backlinks, PR, etc. Its still not done yet. Most data centers are still showing old PR

When do you think most datacenters will start showing the new PR?

And btw, how do you know about this?

for me, its been very chaotic.... one of my sites only had google come in and view about 5K-6K pages while three months ago it viewed 58K .... and to date, the site has allready has over 10X the unique pages it had 3 months ago.

Originally posted by bluzman32
When do you think most datacenters will start showing the new PR?

And btw, how do you know about this? My guess is later today if everything is going normally. However if they are experimenting with some new twists to the algo or something, they might tinker with it for a while.

how do i know this? i checked different data centers. inbetween updates, they're all the same. then when the updates come, the data centers all change, usually over a day or two.

I've also seen some changes over a few datacenters, so I guess blackdog is right about the update beeing complete today, tommorow morning at the latest.

Ya, I just noticed googlebots been hitting all of my pages.

Originally posted by bluzman32
Ya, I just noticed googlebots been hitting all of my pages. that has nothing to do with an update

Does anyone know if the update has happened?

I checked the PR on various sites on all datacenters, nothing changed so far...

Maybe in the upcoming hours

There was a fairly significant algorithmic change a few days ago, and a PageRank recalculation. If you want to call that an "update," then OK, there was an update. But there wasn't an "update" in the sense in which that term has been used historically (i.e. "Google dance"), and -- again -- there's not likely to be one at Google again.
Originally posted by blackdog
[googlebots been hitting all of my pages]
that has nothing to do with an update Right. It used to signal, though, that an update either was going to happen or just happened -- back when Google did a single deep crawl about once a month and refreshed their index with the results of that crawl about a month later. But that's not the way they operate currently.