kaled - 11:39 am on Nov 3, 2003 (gmt 0)

I wrote the following in another thread.

I just noticed something interesting. If you've recently changed the title of a page, had it spidered and indexed, and you then do a link: search that returns the said page, the old title is still displayed. I presume this can be used as an easy way to tell if backlinks have been updated (by checking if the new title is returned). This also says something interesting about the inner workings of the beast

This set me to thinking.

1) We know that Google is operating a rolling update. I have observed on-page changes being reflected in SERPS (almost) immediately.

2) It is generally agreed that back-links are updated every few weeks.

3) It is reasonable to assume that all off-page changes are reflected in SERPS when backlinks are updated.

4) This permits the weighting of on-page factors on SERPS to be studied with a degree of isolation from off-page factors. (Of course, this could be done before but having to wait for monthly dances made it impractical.)

Now there is no chance at all that I am the first member of WW to think of this, which means several members have probably been conducting experiments for some time. Would anyone care to share their conclusions.

Kaled.