After a series of regular monthly updates for 2003, Esmeralda marked a shift in Google Search infrastructure that would be the start of the demise of more significant, dramatic changes, also known as the Google Dance, for the search engine. Instead, it was replaced with Everflux. The June update was not considered as a direct change in algorithm, but an adjustment of the entire system.
The Google Dance was anxiety-inducing for several webmasters and SEO specialists since it came every month. While the updates may be regular, a lot can happen within 30 days. This means that there were dramatic changes with a lot of variables influencing how a page ranks, so it was difficult for site operators to pinpoint the exact cause of their wins or losses in the SERPs.
Esmeralda is considered to have brought about a significant infrastructure shift that allowed the search engine to have daily minor changes instead of making a huge splash every month.
There wasn’t an official announcement on Esmeralda’s exact effects. However, it was replaced with the Everflux update which pertains to the constant shift in the position of sites in the SERPs. There were times when new websites quickly climbed up the ranks in the index but are listed lower after some time.
The Everflux is influenced by Google’s particular method in updating its index through:
The primary benefit of Google Everflux was that new websites did not have to wait for a long time to be integrated into the search index. However, there was a considerable risk of a drop in ranking.
Google has updated this type of search infrastructure which led to volatile SERPs. Now, the index has continuous updates with incremental search where various crawlers look for new content while updating the index simultaneously.
While the search engine’s infrastructure is more stable now, you should still monitor your website’s ranking using these tools: