"Date" tag more important than "Keyword"

[greeneagle]

The 2 most prevailing relevancy problems on the Internet are:

1) SEO Tricks - for false relevancy
2) Outdated info on Sites that haven’t been maintained.

Are search engine algorithms dealing with both? Surely they aren’t so myopic as to deal with #1 only. We believe they are dealing with outdated info which may escalate the importance of including the “Date” metatag (changed each time you update a webpage.

The "Freshness" factor has to figure somewhere in the equation. Is the "Date" becoming or will it become more important while others decrease in importance?

What is your opinion or knowledge on the subject? Replies appreciated.

Sample Date tag:

<meta name="date" content="2003-11-27" />

[minstrel]

In fact, I commented in the "Scroogle" thread that one of the changes I was seeing for listings with my keywords was exactly what you are suggesting: older articles in newspapers, etc., dropping down or dropping out, so that what was left was more current and relevant...

Someone else in the same thread also noticed this...

[lrobertson]

I was wondering whether the length of time since a site was submitted to the search engines also affects rankings? I am new to SEO but for some clients the rankings are slowly dropping and there has been no changes to the site to cause this. Would the fact that the site has not been updated for 6 months have an affect on the ranking?

[minstrel]

Originally Posted by lrobertson

I was wondering whether the length of time since a site was submitted to the search engines also affects rankings? I am new to SEO but for some clients the rankings are slowly dropping and there has been no changes to the site to cause this. Would the fact that the site has not been updated for 6 months have an affect on the ranking?

(1) if you're talking about Google rankings, see all the threads on "Google Dance" - the database and/or filters are still undergoing changes - some of those changes in some cases do seem to be filtering out old content that hasn't changed in a long time
(2) in general, it is believed that regular changes to the content of a site will encourage more frequent visits by spiders - in turn, if those changes increase the "relevancy" or "importance" of a site, that would tend to help stop the sites from dropping

[achronister]

I don't see the date metatag ever having much relevance. It is too easy to manipulate that tag with some scripting to have it update automatically and always be on the current date.

As far as Google finding new pages that were not in its index on the last crawl, I think they may look at that in determining an approximate 'last update'.

[greeneagle]

I found it on the GOOGLE Webmasters Site under Webmaster Guidelines

#3 Below

Technical Guidelines:

1) Use a text browser such as Lynx to examine your site, because most search engine spiders see your site much as Lynx would. If fancy features such as Javascript, cookies, session ID's, frames, DHTML, or Flash keep you from seeing all of your site in a text browser, then search engine spiders may have trouble crawling your site.

2) Allow search bots to crawl your sites without session ID's or arguments that track their path through the site. These techniques are useful for tracking individual user behavior, but the access pattern of bots is entirely different. Using these techniques may result in incomplete indexing of your site, as bots may not be able to eliminate URLs that look different but actually point to the same page.

3) Make sure your web server supports the If-Modified-Since HTTP header. This feature allows your web server to tell Google whether your content has changed since we last crawled your site. Supporting this feature saves you bandwidth and overhead.

4) Make use of the robots.txt file on your web server. This file tells crawlers which directories can or cannot be crawled. Make sure it's current for your site so that you don't accidentally block the Googlebot crawler. Visit http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html for a FAQ answering questions regarding robots and how to control them when they visit your site.

5) If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system can export your content so that search engine spiders can crawl your site.

Another hidden feature to check hosting companies for?

Ken

[greeneagle]

Here is a little more on the If-Modified-Since Header - Gives some insight into one of GOOGLE 100 or so Ranking alogrithms. It appears that content "Freshness" has been weighted heavier in this last dance (from W3-org):

If-Modified-Since
The If-Modified-Since request-header field is used with a method to make it conditional: if the requested variant has not been modified since the time specified in this field, an entity will not be returned from the server; instead, a 304 (not modified) response will be returned without any message-body.

If-Modified-Since = "If-Modified-Since" ":" HTTP-date

An example of the field is:

If-Modified-Since: Sat, 29 Oct 1994 19:43:31 GMT

A GET method with an If-Modified-Since header and no Range header requests that the identified entity be transferred only if it has been modified since the date given by the If-Modified-Since header. The algorithm for determining this includes the following cases:

a) If the request would normally result in anything other than a
200 (OK) status, or if the passed If-Modified-Since date is
invalid, the response is exactly the same as for a normal GET.
A date which is later than the server's current time is
invalid.

b) If the variant has been modified since the If-Modified-Since
date, the response is exactly the same as for a normal GET.

c) If the variant has not been modified since a valid If-
Modified-Since date, the server SHOULD return a 304 (Not
Modified) response.

The purpose of this feature is to allow efficient updates of cached information with a minimum amount of transaction overhead.

Note: The Range request-header field modifies the meaning of If-
Modified-Since; see section 14.35 for full details.

Note: If-Modified-Since times are interpreted by the server, whose
clock might not be synchronized with the client.

Note: When handling an If-Modified-Since header field, some
servers will use an exact date comparison function, rather than a
less-than function, for deciding whether to send a 304 (Not
Modified) response. To get best results when sending an If-
Modified-Since header field for cache validation, clients are
advised to use the exact date string received in a previous Last-
Modified header field whenever possible.

Note: If a client uses an arbitrary date in the If-Modified-Since
header instead of a date taken from the Last-Modified header for
the same request, the client should be aware of the fact that this
date is interpreted in the server's understanding of time. The
client should consider unsynchronized clocks and rounding problems
due to the different encodings of time between the client and
server. This includes the possibility of race conditions if the
document has changed between the time it was first requested and
the If-Modified-Since date of a subsequent request, and the

possibility of clock-skew-related problems if the If-Modified-
Since date is derived from the client's clock without correction
to the server's clock. Corrections for different time bases
between client and server are at best approximate due to network
latency.

The result of a request having both an If-Modified-Since header field and either an If-Match or an If-Unmodified-Since header fields is undefined by this specification.

[minstrel]

greeneagle...

Clairification:

If I read you correctly, in your later posts, you seem to be talking about a system generated page variable, while in the original post you were talking about a specific meta tag, which, personally, I wasn't familiar with - page from Georgetown University website

<META NAME="date" CONTENT="Month Date, Year">
The "date" tag is used to indicate the date on which the document was created, and the "revised" tag indicates the most recent revision date.

<META NAME="date" CONTENT="December 15, 1996">
<META NAME="revised" CONTENT="January 10, 2001">

Note that these tags can be generated in FrontPage.

<META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="Tue, 30 Aug 1996 13:24:30 GMT">

This tag indicates that the document expires on the indicated date. This is useful for HTML files that frequently change, as this tag instructs the web browser to load a new copy of the file from the server, instead of using the copy in the browser's cache. Note that you must indicate the date in the above format for this tag to function properly.

For more information about meta tags, see the Web Developer's Virtual Library and the Dictionary of HTML META Tags.

I wonder how many search engines pay attention to this/these meta tags as opposed to the system variables or the "Last updated" statement on a wseb page.

[greeneagle]

minstrel,

Thanks for replying. It's been a long time since I found a space and time to engage an intellegence that truly understood "sounding board" principles across disciplines!(25yrs+ in R&D)

It's beyond reproach that the second step in the "Two Step" dance that Google is doing is aimed at "Content Freshness", ref new post " on GOOGLE forum, "Thankyou GOOGLE - I love the dance lessons".

But, How about all the secondary search engines?, Do they key off of the "Date" metatag" or the "If-Modified-Since HTTP header"?

I don't have a clue at this point in my research!

Maybe it's best to provide both!

Completely open minded - Shine some light!
I'll do my best,

Thanks,
Ken