Definition
Exponential backoff is a retry strategy that doubles the wait time after each failed attempt. If the first retry waits 1 second, the second waits 2, the third waits 4, the fourth waits 8, and so on - each retry waits twice as long as the previous. The effect is that a transient blip gets retried quickly, but a sustained outage stops generating a retry storm that could prolong the outage.
Production implementations add jitter (a random offset to each wait time) to prevent the thundering-herd problem where many clients retry in lockstep. They also cap the maximum wait time ("after 10 retries, don't wait longer than an hour") and have a final retry count beyond which the operation is declared failed.
How SheetLinkWP relates to Exponential Backoff
SheetLink Forms' retry queue uses exponential backoff: 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 2 hours. After 3 failed attempts, the submission moves to the dead-letter list in SheetLink > Tools > Retry Queue. This schedule covers almost all transient Google Sheets outages without generating excess retry traffic.