I was reading a thread on a forum about Google’s next reindex and how it might be another Florida.

The first thing that hit me was how seriously some people (affiliate marketers, SEOs) take Google. In a matter of a few hours, almost two hundred messages were posted of people analyzing the results of the update. The second thing that hit me was how complex Google really is.

Not understanding some of the terms used in the posts, I did some searching. The Google Dance refers to the process where a new Google index rolls out across the various Google data centres. Here and here, you can see the results of a search across different data centres.

If you’re curious about more methods used to optimise pages, here is a page on SEO tools.

And, finally, some blogs having to do with google

Google Weblog
Research Buzz (a good general one on research, but good google content)

Anyway, what’s the relevance of all this Google stuff? It’s all designed to make the results (SERPs - Search Engine Result Pages) contain useful information instead of affiliate sites and popup traps. So people like you and I can find useful information on the Internet. I also look at it as a race between the google Engineers trying to make a smarter GoogleBot, and people trying to exploit it. It’s a great spectator sport.

Updated: Found some more links on the way Google works.
A paper on Google’s architecture, interesting analysis of the cost to run a distributed environment vs. a centralized one. Also contains information on the flow that happens when someone queries Google.
They’ve also built their own file system on top of Linux.