Google Dance

In the past Google updated their index roughly once a month. Those updates were named Google Dances, but since Google shifted to a constantly updating index, Google no longer does what was traditionally called a Google Dance. Major search indexes are constantly updating. Google refers to this continuous refresh as everflux. The second meaning of Google Dance is a yearly party at Google's corporate headquarters which Google holds for search engine marketers. This party coincides with the San Jose Search Engine Strategies conference. See also: Matt Cutts Google Terminology Video - Matt talks about the history of Google Updates and the shift from Google Dances to everflux.

The Google Dance refers to when Google indexes are updated. This period of time often results in fluctuations in the index size and some noticeable changes in search engine result positions. The term Google Dance was adopted as while an update is being processed the position of a website in Google seems to "dance" as it fluctuates. The fluctuation is due to each of Google's nine datacenters being updated out of sync - meaning for a time the results are different.