The third time’s a charm! Good things come in threes, but why should that be a surprise? After all, three is the magic number. It’s also true that a Google Mini in the rack is worth two on the FedEx truck back to Cali. Of course, like my grandpa always said, don’t count your queries before the crawl’s hatched! Phew. Ok, enough of that.
As discussed recently, we’ve been having some problems with our search engine. After many rounds of e-mail (and one terse message left with Google’s voicemail), we now have a solution in place.
The culprit? A software bug that Google is currently tracking. Unfortunately, that meant installing another Google Mini (the third in the last month). Then, troubleshooting an apparent delay in the search engine beginning its crawl again. A support ticket is still out on that particular issue. However, it’s currently re-indexing the site as we speak, so search results should be back to normal by the end of the day.
The lesson to take away from this? That although the Web is awesome and magical, there isn’t always a fast solution. Even when dealing with what may be a known bug to a vendor, having to co-ordinate with support that is at least three time zones away can be challenging. Once the issue has been identified, a new machine has to be shipped, arrive, get configured, have magic incantations said over it, and installed. For installation, we first have to co-ordinate with Computing and Technology Services to find a time in both our schedules when we can install the new machine (the incantations can really take up a lot of time).
As much as I may wish there was a magic wand for these issues, one isn’t always available. For the end users, as well as our own team, this can be frustrating. I, for one, appreciate everyone’s patience so far.
Off to the searches!
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