Cache - It's not just for spending anymore!

nipplecharms1 · #1 (**permalink**) 01-17-2006, 01:38 PM

Cache and Google.

What is the deal? The other day I find my new index page is in the cached link on the "G". Kewl I say to myself. (I often talk to myself and the exchanges are fun.)

Then I look today. Was I dreaming the other day? I see that my site was spider-ed "www.nipplecharms.com/ - 19k - Jan 16, 2006 " on 1/16. I am positive that I uploaded my new page by them.

BUT LO AND BEHOLD, what does my wondering eyes do appear... No not a bunch of reindeer but my old index page. The one that tanked, the one that everyone here said I should get rid of because it looks too much like a doorway page.

How does that happen? And if it can, what stops it? Why bother making changes if the “G” grabs some ole page out of archive? Is my www.google. com picking up different data centers as Ken once informed me could happen? Are not all the data centers that power/drive the main “G” site sync with itself?

I am in a quandary. What to do, what shall I do?

Suggestions are most-times welcome and even more so encouraged. My thanks in advance.

Michael

PS: and what the heck is this about "Big Daddy"? Maybe a parody on the GODADDY-large-breasted-girls commercial or is the "G" gonna dance yet again?

WAITRESS!

cspelts · #2 (**permalink**) 01-17-2006, 08:52 PM

If you look at the cached page, at the very top in the Google header is the date that particular page was cached. The date in the search results and the date at the top of a cached page do not always match up - and I don't know why not - but at least you can tell when they grabbed it.

nipplecharms1 · #3 (**permalink**) 01-17-2006, 09:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by cspelts

If you look at the cached page, at the very top in the Google header is the date that particular page was cached. The date in the search results and the date at the top of a cached page do not always match up - and I don't know why not - but at least you can tell when they grabbed it.

Well Hell's Bells I did not know that.

Thanks for the insight CS!

Michael

rocky1 · #4 (**permalink**) 01-18-2006, 12:03 AM

Nothing you can do but sit back and wait it out Michael, I've seen this situation more than once on Google and Yahoo! and the only thing that resolves it is time.

It's not only possible, but also very likely that you'll see the pages dance back and forth for a few days. I've seen Google do this on more than one occasion; where the new page reloads over night, then they switch back to the old page before noon the following day, usually 09:00 - 11:00 PST. It will do that usually for a period of 4 - 7 days, then it fixes one page or the other, if the old page locks in it usually remains there for a few days to a week then it reverts to the new page.

Yahoo on the other hand did that to me once, locked in the old page day two of cached pages flip flopping, and sat on it for 6 weeks, despite all the noise I was making about their results being flawed, having witnessed the new page and new results on that site in their listing, then having them buried again for 6 weeks.

In that case, the site revisions brought the site from unfound, to page 1 for several desired search strings, and said results likewise floated up and down with the revised page in cache! I was not a happy camper!!

One thing you might want to try Michael is installation of Meta Date tag. Caryl McDar indicated in thread on her forum that seemed to have some impact on her results and forced the engines to lock on newer copy, thus driving better results on revised pages quicker.

<meta name="date" content="January 17, 2006">

I typically try and update the date therein routinely where used, in fact I don't use this tag on sites that I don't update frequently. I typically use it to let the bots know that something internal has changed. If I make major up dates internally on the site, then I change the meta-date on the template so changes to all pages are hopefully seen, and the bots crawl the works. Does that work??? Well.... It seems to, to some extent anyhow. If not, it's fun harassing the bots with it if nothing else! (o;?

krisidious · #5 (**permalink**) 01-18-2006, 02:14 AM

I suggest making a google sitemap and leaving the splash sceen page in the sitemap, then change the page or delete it after being accepted to the google sitemap... that way you know that you are directly communicating with google about this specific file.

good luck...

nipplecharms1 · #6 (**permalink**) 01-18-2006, 09:06 AM

Dear Rocky and Kris,

Thanks for your replies. I thought I was having an LSD flashback there for a second. (does one have to have tried LSD first to have a flashback? Maybe that is for the WebMD forum!)

I will give it a lookie. I noticed today that on the trem nipple jewelry, the "G" has the new and even more suckier index page I am using.

Thanks again and I will keep trying.

Michael

zbatia · #7 (**permalink**) 01-19-2006, 12:40 PM

Many of our pages are designed with a META tag:
<meta http-equiv="pragma" content="no-cache" />
So, I suggest to design new web pages with this tag, and wait until your old file on G will expire itself.
Again, there is no proof that it makes the trick...

maniactive · #8 (**permalink**) 01-20-2006, 11:15 AM

I have a verified Google Sitemap at one of my sites (since October). And the Google Sitemap tool tells me that it comes crawling every day, and that it has no problem crawling any of my 18,000+ pages. So hurray for that....

But what I find puzzling is Google's cache on these pages, which the sitemap tool says it crawls daily.

The cache on many of these pages show ancient caches. Like August 2005 ancient.

And yes, these pages are updated on almost a daily basis...

So I have a quandary. Google Sitemaps says "We crawl all these pages daily". Google Cache says, "August 2005 was the last time we were here".

Anybody have any clues?

BTW - I run sitemap on three other sites, and I don't have this problem with the three others...

nipplecharms1 · #9 (**permalink**) 01-20-2006, 11:19 AM

Dear maniactive,

Are the other sites newer?

And one other question if you dont mind... how the HELL do you keep track of 18,000 pages? I have a head time with 60.

Michael

maniactive · #10 (**permalink**) 01-20-2006, 01:08 PM

Re: the 18,000+ pages: Content Management Systems sure do help. I'm rather smitten with Joomla! at the moment, but there are others that do a smashing job of keeping track of contributers, articles, updates, etc.

Re: the sites newness v. oldness. One of my sites that's doing fine with Google sitemap and ranking is less than than 2 months old. So much for sandbox theory. (Granted, it's very niched and not very competitive.)

Another site that's doing well with Google sitemaps and ranking is almost 7 years old -- and it's very competitive.

The one troublesome site that's doing the strange cacheing is over 7 years old...and it's a super competitive market.

So age and amount of competition don't appear to be factors.

But there are some differences between the one site that's getting weird cache issues and the other two:

Google sees the encoding as ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) for the weird cache site. The other sites are US-ASCII and UTF-8 encoded. The other sites are also on Linux, while the weird cache site is Windows dotnet.

Anybody have any insight?