How can one tell when a Google Crawl is taking place?  I once saw a
web site that had a function to detect that the "crawl" was under way,
but I can't recall where i saw this tool.

Thanks for asking!

The Googlebot crawls the Web continuously, archiving web pages new and
old. The archived websites which meet Google's inclusion criteria are
added during the next update of the Google index. The update process
is initiated approximately every 30 days.

During this time, the index appears to reside on several servers, each
with different versions of the database. Over the several days the
updates take, search results can vary from server to server. The
results are said to be "dancing." The term Google Dance was coined to
describe this phenomenon.

The last observed Google Dance Began: 8:00 PM (EST) on June 15 2003.

You may track the Google Dance using the Google Dance Tool:

Google-Dance.com
http://www.google-dance.com/

Additional Google Dance measuring tools are available. I've listed two
below which offer a similar test to determine if the next Google Dance
has begun. The first listing also provides additional information
about the Googlebots, and Google Dance cycles.

Google Dance
http://www.internet-advertising-marketing-manual.com/google-dance.htm

Google Dance Tool
http://www.google-dance-tool.1hut.com/

Additional Resources:
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Google Directory - Google Tools
http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/Searching/Search_Engines/Google/Tools/


I hope this helps.

--- larre


Google Search Terms:
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googlebot freshbot
"google dance"

Try one of these sites:

http://www.google-dance.com/
http://dance.efactory.de/