Re: Altavista better than Google for genealogy searches

On 15 May 2008 in soc.genealogy.misc, Denis Beauregard wrote:

> I would not be surprised that the result for your search on my
> computer would not be the same on your computer...

In addition to your observations, Google has several server farms 
around the world, which they use for load balancing, shortening paths, 
and maybe localizing results.  The server farm updates aren't 
necessarily in sync, so that the server you connect to can influence 
search results.  I once taught a class on searching, and in a room of 
about 20 computers, all doing an identical search at the same time 
using Google, there were three distinct result sets, with different 
numbers of results and different first-page sites.

   Though the numbers are not publicly known, some people estimate
   that Google maintains over 450,000 servers, arranged in racks
   located in clusters in cities around the world, with major centers
   in Mountain View, California; Virginia; Atlanta, Georgia; Dublin,
   Ireland; and new facilities constructed in The Dalles, Oregon and
   Saint-Ghislain, Belgium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_platform

-- 
Joe Makowiec
http://makowiec.org/
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