Datedate

do spiders look at that?

[fashezee]

Is how fresh you content a criteria when spidering occurs?

[skirril]

I think that depends,

On a site I co manage (that changes content pretty frequently, and has high traffic volume), I see spiders more often than on a lower-trafficked site (where content does not change that often).

I think the age of the content may well influence the ranking of the site, at least with the 'top5' search engines.

Skirril

[jatar_k]

this thread dealt with that very issue, specific to googlebot but more than likely applies to other bots as well.

Are you using If Modified Since? [webmasterworld.com]