How does Google consider the freshness of the page?

[GreenLeaf]

Hi all again!
Another question:
Does Google consider the freshness of the page on the basis of the page file's last modified date or on the basis of page's content?
I mean that if there is some rotating with Server Side Include pieces on a page but the file's last modified date is the same, will Google consider that page as changed?
Thanks.

[daisho]

Expires and Last-Modified headers I find *VERY* important. Especially the Last-Modified. I've had google crawl a page over months that was a PHP page and the content change but google never reindexed. As soon as I started sending Last-Modified google recached and FreshBot comes around.

[Matthew McNally]

As soon as I started sending Last-Modified google recached and FreshBot comes around.

Can you explain what you mean by this - sorry for showing my ignorance

8(

I have a set of forums, and a news page, which are dynamically generated php pages - and would love to help get them freshbotted

[daisho]

No problem. Something like the following will be a good start for you:

Header("Last-Modified: "
. gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s",time())
. " GMT");

This will send an HTTP header (Not to be confused with a META HTTP-EQUIV tag) telling the client when the last time the content was updated.

The example above uses the "time()" function to figure out the time. You should not use the example above without changing that. You should change "time()" to a timestamp that is the best representation for when the content was last updated.

IE for a forums site you could use message times.

daisho

[Matthew McNally]

so it is something you display on the screen?

I was thinking in the headers for some reason

[daisho]

No it doesn't get displayed. The Header() PHP function sends an HTTP header. It is never shown.

daisho

[Matthew McNally]

so how do you tell if it has worked?

especially when you are posting on a forum that won't allow URLS for examples!

:)

is it ok to put

www
mysite
com

or should I just offer to sticky the URL to anyone good enough to help?

[pixel_juice]

so how do you tell if it has worked?

Use the [url=http://www.webmasterworld.com/stickymail.cgi?action=headers]server header checker ;)

[Matthew McNally]

<homer>
D'OH!
</homer>

went to the tools page as well - to use the sim spider

talk about not being able to see your nose in front of your face

:(

cheers!