--- title: "Big Daddy update (2005): what changed and what it means now" url: https://seomadman.com/updates/big-daddy-update-2005 section: updates language: en published: 2026-09-26T00:00:00.000Z modified: 2026-09-26T00:00:00.000Z author: Adam Hafez topics: ["Technical SEO"] --- # Big Daddy update (2005): what changed and what it means now ## The short answer Big Daddy was an upgrade to how Google crawled and partly indexed the web, first spotted on a test data center around 14 December 2005. Google's Matt Cutts named it, described it as new infrastructure rather than a ranking update, and said it was fully deployed by 29 March 2006. Google published no impact figures. ## Key takeaways - Matt Cutts described Big Daddy as a software upgrade to Google's crawling and parts of its indexing. - Search Engine Roundtable reported the test data center on 14 December 2005. - Cutts said Big Daddy was fully deployed and the old system turned off by 29 March 2006. - Cutts named it Bigdaddy after a suggestion from a webmaster at Pubcon, not WebmasterWorld. - Google said it laid groundwork for better canonicalization and smarter redirect handling. ## What Google changed Big Daddy was a change to Google's infrastructure rather than its ranking formulas. In his [4 January 2006 post](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/bigdaddy/), Matt Cutts wrote that "this is neither an update nor a data refresh; this is new infrastructure." In a later [indexing timeline](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/indexing-timeline/) he called it "a software upgrade of our crawling and parts of our indexing." Cutts said it laid the groundwork for better canonicalization, and in March 2006 listed smarter redirect handling as another improvement it would enable. He also said it brought smarter Googlebot crawling, including full gzip support and a crawl caching proxy. Google named it itself. Cutts explained that a webmaster called JeffM suggested "Bigdaddy" during a Pubcon session, and Cutts used it because the change fell outside WebmasterWorld's usual update naming. ## When it rolled out Search Engine Roundtable [reported a test data center](https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002962.html) with a new index on 14 December 2005, the same address Cutts later named as a Bigdaddy data center. Cutts said the crawl and index team were ready to debut it in December but gave no day, so the start date here is approximate. He opened it for feedback on 4 January 2006. By 29 March 2006, he wrote, Big Daddy "was fully deployed and the old system was turned off." ## What is known about its impact Google published no impact figures. Cutts described the ranking changes as relatively subtle and said most changes were under the hood. In his timeline he said the main complaint was that some sites saw few pages indexed. He attributed that to low trust in a site's links, such as excessive reciprocal links or link buying and selling, and said Google tuned thresholds to crawl more pages from those sites. ## What site owners should do Big Daddy itself is history, but canonicalization, which it prepared the ground for, is still how Google handles duplicate URLs. Google's current guidance describes it as choosing the representative URL from a set of duplicate pages. - Choose one preferred URL for each page and point redirects and rel="canonical" at it. - Keep internal links, sitemaps and redirects consistent with that preferred URL. - Avoid link schemes that, as Cutts described, can lower trust in a site's links. ## How to check whether it affected you This is a historical question. Search Console keeps 16 months of data and did not exist in 2006, so the only evidence would be server logs or analytics archives from December 2005 to March 2006. For anything recent, the [Google Algorithm Updates timeline](/updates) lists every update with its dates, so you can check what rolled out when. ## Related updates - The [Jagger update](/updates/jagger-update-2005) was the ranking update just before it, in late 2005. - The [Bourbon update](/updates/bourbon-update-2005) drew earlier reports of canonical URL problems, in 2005. - The [Caffeine indexing system](/updates/caffeine-indexing-system-2010) was Google's next major indexing rebuild, in 2010. ## Frequently asked questions ### Did Google confirm the Big Daddy update? Yes, through Matt Cutts, then head of Google's webspam team, on his personal blog. He opened it for feedback on 4 January 2006 and posted progress updates until it was fully deployed. ### Why is it called Big Daddy? Matt Cutts named it. He wrote that a webmaster called JeffM suggested Bigdaddy at Pubcon, because that is what his children called him, and Cutts used it for the test data center. ### Was Big Daddy a ranking update? Google said it was mainly infrastructure. Cutts called it neither an update nor a data refresh, but a software upgrade to crawling and parts of indexing, with relatively subtle ranking changes. ### When did Big Daddy finish? Cutts wrote that by 29 March 2006 Big Daddy was fully deployed and the old system was turned off. It had been visible on test data centers since December 2005. ## Sources 1. [Feedback on Bigdaddy data center](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/bigdaddy/) - Matt Cutts (primary) 2. [Bigdaddy status update: almost there](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/bigdaddy-status-update-almost-there/) - Matt Cutts (primary) 3. [Indexing timeline](https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/indexing-timeline/) - Matt Cutts (primary) 4. ["Big Daddy" Data Center Discovered at 64.233.179.104](https://www.seroundtable.com/archives/002962.html) - Search Engine Roundtable 5. [What is URL canonicalization](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/canonicalization) - Google Search Central (primary)