Google Dance
The Google Dance (English for Google dance ) is a slang term in relation to the behavior of the Google search engine from the US company Google Inc. It describes the phenomenon of different search results with simultaneous, identical search queries.
Cause and background
The search engine automatically indexes the Internet using web crawlers . In order to distribute the load , this is done via several self-sufficient data centers, each with its own database index . The database index is updated at certain fixed intervals, but independently by each data center. This update can occur with a time delay between the servers and therefore lead to a more or less large difference in the indices of different servers at a given point in time. In the case of user-side search queries, different data centers are addressed due to different DNS addresses, and different results can be obtained from the various indices despite identical search queries.
After a Google Dance , the placement of individual search results is often changed. By mid-2003, when the company switched from monthly to continuous updates, this had an even bigger impact than it does today.
The update process itself is also sometimes referred to as Google Dance .