(The strange story of the 2005 world-changing update to Google,
known as "Jagger", and how it got its name.)
You may be able to remember way back to 2005 when Google had
slowly but surely become a mess. It didn't seem to matter what you
were searching for, discount lawnmowers or how to knit a scarf, David
Lee Roth or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the results returned were
invariably choked with irrelevant sites offering porn and free-cable-tv
devices and sundry get-rich-quick schemes.
But mostly porn.
And while all this porn inevitably led to a bull market in Google-is-
the-Devil sermons from fundamentalist preachers, a far more serious
bear market in eCommerce was also threatening to develop.
Unreliable search engines meant unreliable advertising which
meant unreliable billing and unreliable sales.
Sure, somebody was getting rich alright, but it was not the
somebodies who were supposed to be getting rich. Instead it
was the mostly Russian syndicates that had learned how to game
the system and fix the Google results.
Consequently, of even more concern to Google than all the porn
was the fact that these syndicates had started to sell Google's secrets
to mainstream businesses, who were always looking for an edge
on their competitors. So while Harry's Cheapo Lawnmowers of
Bakersfield might legitimately deserve 545th place in Google's
search results for "discount lawnmowers" based on actual traffic,
now because Harry was forking over a few thousand a month to
the Russian mob, Harry suddenly found himself at number 4,
on page 1 of the results, for which he and his newly diamond-
encrusted mistress were understandably grateful.
The Russian mob's simple edge was the gaggle of then unemployed
genius mathematicians in the collapsed Soviet Union who, in
exchange for oranges or sausages or toilet paper, would happily
slave away all day at their PCs to uncover Google's methodologies.
Google's counter-attack would prove to be just as simple. They outbid
the mob for these same geniuses. In exchange for Porsches and
Rolexes and condos overlooking the Pacific, the Russian
geniuses were relocated to California where they would happily
slave away all day at their PCs to drastically improve the same Google
methodologies that they had heretofore been subverting. The
geniuses figured out how to detect and discard all the false links
and false traffic being auto-created in search-spam factories not only
in Russia but now in China and India and lots of other places. This
new, much more powerful Google algorithm was rolled out in late
2005. Its name was "Jagger".
Almost overnight, porn disappeared from most search results. Almost
overnight, site rankings were radically revised. Almost overnight,
Jagger defeated the Russian mob and saved the Internet.
In light of this victory, Google wisely decided to keep assembled their
team of geniuses, and this team has protected and bolstered Google
to this day. There has been no need for another Jagger, because
the original Jagger is worked on constantly, continuously improved,
to stay ten steps ahead of the scammers. Google Search and
the Jagger project are truely now and forever one and the same.
I only know about all this stuff because I noticed the last few years that
whenever I, as a Rolling Stones fan, googled, for example, Jagger and
Britney, or Jagger and Madoff, that my results would inevitably include
many sites that discussed Google's Jagger. In fact, if you google
+jagger +google, you get nearly a million hits discussing this
algorithm (versus about 4 million hits for "mick jagger"). The
average person may not have heard about Google's Jagger, but
in the world of eCommerce, it was a very big deal indeed.
It was natural to wonder, at least natural for me, if Google's Jagger
could possibly have any connection to our Sir Mick. When I looked
into this briefly a few years ago, the answer seemed to be "no". All
I could find were a number of sites that claimed that Google's Jagger
was derived from the Olde English jagger which was derived from
the German jaeger which means "hunter". The algorithm was
thusly named supposedly because Google's Jagger hunted down
and killed false search data.
Although that explanation sounded reasonable enough, I noted
that none of the sites making this claim had any citation or other
evidence to back it up. To me it smelled like a guess masquerading
as a fact, so I resolved to delve into it more at some future time.
That future time came a few days ago when once again some
"Jagger" search I was doing came back clogged with "Google Jagger"
results.
Who exactly named this algorithm, I wondered.
The answer to that, it turned out, was surprisingly easy to find. It is
universally acknowledged that the originator of the name Jagger for
Google's earthshaking 2005 update was a Mr. Brett Tabke.
Tabke is a search engine analyst, with high-level contacts within
Google. He is the founder of WebmasterWorld, an online search
engine and internet marketing forum that often receives over 1 million
pageviews per day.
So then I searched WebmasterWorld to see if by any chance Tabke
had ever said why he had named it Jagger (or maybe why somebody
inside Google had named it that, and then leaked it to Tabke). I fully
expected to either find nothing or perhaps find Tabke confirming the
jaeger-hunter explanation. So it was a very pleasant shock when I
found the following live discussion thread from October 18, 2005.
Usually, with this kind of research, all I ever find is circumstantial
evidence. But here was the smoking gun. (FYI, the "Matt Cutts"
referred to is Google's leader of the team of Russian geniuses.
"PubCon" is an annual convention of webmasters):
jretzer 5:33 pm:
Anyone have any guesses as to when we can expect a new
systemwide update?
JuniorOptimizer 5:39 pm:
Within the next 48 hours for sure.
Mack 5:41 pm:
What makes you say that?
Junior Optimizer 5:43 pm:
Matt's blog...
photo200 6:06 pm:
And why do you care at all about this little update?
oddsod 6:07 pm:
With a lot of link exchanging/selling etc being based on it why
shouldn't he care?
Brett_Tabke 9:48 pm:
The Stones are playing Vegas the week of PubCon and Matt Cutts
was recently called the Mick Jagger of search. DeepSearch says
update within 48hrs. PS: Don't miss Matt at PubCon where I am sure
we will be talking about update Jagger...
skipfactor 9:55 pm:
>The Stones are playing Vegas the week of PubCon and Matt Cutts
> was recently called the Mick Jagger of search.
Nice one Brett.
Crush 9:57 pm:
Wow, named now. I think Matt Cutts is more like Alan Greenspan
than Mick Jagger. Took your time naming it Tabke.
reseller 10:00 pm:
Hi Folks. The name is: Update Jagger. I like it. As good as
Bacon Polenta.
So, there you have it. Roll over Wikipedia, and tell Technorati the
news: Google's Jagger was indeed named after the lead singer
of the Rolling Stones. Smartest technology on the planet named after
the smartest flesh-and-blood on the planet. Makes sense to me.
- - rev20
Just a quick addendum:
While out on my morning walk, I was suddenly struck by the oddness
of the name of Google's "Mick Jagger of Search": Matt Cutts. You
probably know how David Bowie picked his stage name. Jagger =
Knife = Bowie. So I'm thinking, Jagger = Knife also happens to = Cutts.
Mick Jagger. Matt Cutts. Hmmm. Could it be that not only Matt's
greatest invention, Jagger, is named after the Rolling Stone, but also
Matt himself?
So of course I decide to check out this Cutts guy a little more. Remember,
even though I, and probably you, had never heard of him before, in geek world
particularly, he's quite famous. His 400,000 hits on Google compares favorably
with Charlie Watts's 300,000 and Ronnie Woods 600,000.
Cutts is very much the public face of Google to all those who depend on
Google for all or part of their living. He's also the one who most often is
called upon to defend Google whenever they are accused of doing
something evil.
In fact, if Google was the Rolling Stones, you could say that CEO Eric
Schmidt was their Charlie, founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were
Keith and Ronnie, and that we could expect Matt Cutts at any moment
to be re-christened Sir Matt Cutts.
Cutts even has his own groupies: The Cheetah Cuttlets.
Yes, that's a joke. But only the Cheetah part. Not Cutts having his own
groupies. Known, I swear to you, as the Cuttlets.
Anyway, the relevant question here is whether Matt Cutts is his real name.
No absolute proof yet, but based on the circumstantial evidence, I doubt it.
First of all, its been recently revealed that Cutts has been posting all
over the Net for years as GoogleGuy, even though he's always denied it.
So he's no stranger to pseudonyms.
Secondly, the guy has absolutely no known history before his university
days, other than being "from Kentucky". No home town listed that
celebrates him as a favorite son. No childhood friends that remember
him from high school. Nothing. For such a famous guy, that's very
unusual.
Thirdly, it has been confirmed that Cutts held a Top Secret clearance
at the National Security Agency as a college student! Let me tell you
something, I used to work for the Feds, and that is just impossible.
Unless you've got some sort of extra special connections. Which Cutts
claims he does not have, him being of course just a regular guy from
parts unknown in Kentucky (no wonder there are conspiracy theories
that postulate that Google is really just an arm of the US intelligence
agencies).
The fourth and last reason to think that Matt Cutts is a pseudonym
is by far the most fun and wacky reason. Google founders founders
Larry Page and Sergey Brin have often been referred to as "Smart
and Smarter", based partly on their shared love as students of the
1994 comedy hit "Dumb and Dumber" (Google stock being compared
to the suitcase full of IOU's carried around by the two idiots in that
movie). And what do the Dumb and Dumber guys drive around in
that movie? A van that looks like a dog to advertise a hair cutting
service for dogs. And what is the name of that service as shown
on the side of the dog van?
(Sorry I couldn't figure out how to insert the answer. So I'll
link to it instead)
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Qn_a0SYfBgY/R_E2bqORZOI/AAAAAAAAALo/dGDyAoMsx60/s1600-...
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The algorithm that saved the Internet: Jagger (Read 939 times)
