How Google will consider the freshness of the page with SSI calls?

The file is the same but page's content is different...

[GreenLeaf]

Hi all!
How Google will concider the freshness of the page with multiple SSI calls: the page has different content every time it's loading, but page's file is the same.
Thanks.

[Duniyadnd]

Hey Greenleaf. Google cannot see how the page is put together, whether you call in through PHP includes, or you use SSIs. What you see in the source code from the browser is what google will see. If google went beyond that somehow, they would have to be in your control panel to access the files and figure out the true source which would obviously be a breach of security.

[DerekH]

There's a secondary issue here...

Google will see, to all intents and purposes, a new page - same name, new content, just as if you'd manually updated it.

However, what Google will NOT see is a fresh page-modified date when it interrogates the file. For that reason, I suspect Google may well not be that interested in fetching the file.

On one of my sites, I have a static page that has a META refresh to a page that changes almost daily. Google looks at the static page and seldom retrieves it to see what's in there - last time was August 27th.

DerekH

[GreenLeaf]

Thanks, guys!
That's exactly what i would know: that Google will not see a fresh last-modified date of that page.
So, may be it's possible to add some script that could set the last-modified date as NEW every day?

[mbauser2]

It's certainly possible to write a script that changes the file date, but you haven't told us what OS you're running on. (I'll assume the server is Apache, since SSI is an Apache term.)

If it's on a UNIX system, the solution to your problem is as simple as putting "touch *.html" in a crontab file. "man touch" and "man crontab" at the command line to find out what I'm talking about.

Caveat: Some Apache server configurations don't put Last-Modified dates on SSI-ed files unless you use the "XBitHack" directive.

[GreenLeaf]

Yes, my site is on Unix and Apache. And i suspect that my server don't return Last-Modified date.
What is "XBitHack" directive and where it must be set?

[mbauser2]

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_include.html#xbithack

[GreenLeaf]

Thanks!