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There are some new signs of Google Inc.s rumored “Big Daddy” infrastructure overhaul, search engine industry sources say.
The evidence, now winding through the online community, led one Google aficionado screen-named SEOBrains to recently write “It seems like Big Daddy is 100 percent live.”
Sources contacted by eWEEK have confirmed many recent examples cited by participants on Search Engine Watch and other online forums.
Big Daddy, said to be the projects nickname, refers to new data centers that Google was said to be developing and is now said to be testing.
Google and other search engines rely on a global network of data centers to perform core tasks like cataloging Web sites or serving up localized features.
The Big Daddy project stands out because search engines infrequently upgrade the computing and networking hardware. Instead, the firms focus on developing new features to lure more site visitors, which translates to more advertising revenues.
Infrastructure changes have a big impact on the enterprises and consumers that are increasingly relying on Google, and other search engines, in their day-to-day activities.
Lending support to these rumors, back in January, Googles chief search engineer, Matt Cutts, wrote on his blog that what he called the new “Bigdaddy” technology was in place in two of Googles data centers.
Cutts wrote that two data centers using the new infrastructure are “live 100% of the time.” In the same blog entry, Cutts also answered his own question about when the new data centers would be online. “Right now Im guessing 1-2 months,” he wrote. “But if I find out more specifics Ill let you know.”
Judging from the recent plethora of evidence cited by Google watchers, it seems that Big Daddy may have spread to much more of Googles data center network.
It has also recently come to light that Big Daddy may fix flaws that have troubled Web publishers for years, according to Smart House Magazine, Text Links Brokers and Prism Business Media.
According to these sources, Googles data centers no longer let outsiders hijack a Web browser on the way to what appears to be a legitimate Web address, and redirect it for shock value or more nefarious reasons.
Observers also said they have spotted new types of “spiders” from Google, which jump from link to link to index Web pages to return search results to engines.
Another publishing nightmare that may be be addressed involves false positives that lead to sites getting wrongly kicked off Googles database, therefore being off-limits to the search users.
The rumor mill has built Big Daddy into a major overhaul that will help Google catch up to rival Yahoo in some regards, and put Google ahead of competitors in other categories.
A Google spokesperson had no comment.