Setting the nocache tag triggers a penalty?

Thread about if the nocache tag demotes a site for a certain search.

[mexicoguy]

I was just wondering if anyone has experienced (since Florida of course) that having a site with the NOCACHE tag enabled seems to move down the site in the serps quite a bit (thus triggering some sort of ban or penalty).

I have the meta tag because my site is dynamic and changes every hour with new information and I don't want an old version of my site wandering around in google. I have no problem in removing the tag if it helps however. It seems is triggering some sort of ban or penalty. If it is, I believe is a bit unfair as google shouldn't force us to accept a copy of our sites to be cached.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Regards,

MexicoGuy

[TryAgain]

If you clap your hands and at the same time the phone starts ringing.

Did you make the phone start ringing by clapping your hands?

;)

[mipapage]

and I don't want an old version of my site wandering around in google.

Don't worry, neither do they!

[GoogleGuy]

TryAgain, do you mind if I use that quote the next time that someone claims that adding/dropping AdWords caused their site to be crawled/not crawled? That's a very clear analogy. :)

[Kirby]

do you mind if I use that quote

Heck GG, we quote you all the time.

[mexicoguy]

Hi,

I'm sorry I was not saying it does, is just something I have noticed recently; it was more a question than an affirmation.

I apologize but I didn't quite get your response. English is not my first language. Should I assume you intend to say it totally unrelated?

Warmest Regards.

[DaveAtIFG]

Hey mexicoguy, welcome to WebmasterWorld! :) Ignore those clowns that already posted, they're not making fun of you, I assure you. (Many of them are familiar to me and they're really pretty nice people.) They're just having some fun.

My experience with nocache is from about 18 months ago. At that time, adding the tag caused the site to be dropped until it was respidered/reindexed about 4-6 weeks later, right back to it's former position in the SERPs.

GoogleGuy's comment IMPLIES that nocache should have no impact post-Florida. He seems somewhat "less forthcoming" about Google algo specifics than he has been in the past though... ;) And that's understandable I guess. :)

Again, welcome!

[vrtlw]

Hello Mexicoguy

I have done some recent experiments on this subject. I have not however had the time to test it for the 4-6 weeks as indicated, but I have had some rather good results with one method.

The method is detailed in a thread on this board somewhere and involves calling an external javascript script rather that using the nocache tag.

What this script does is redirect the user to your current page when the script is called from the google cache. I use this method for a different reason than you, I use absolutely positioned content placed by CSS and the google cache header really messes up my layout.

I do not believe I have experienced any kind of penalty with this method. I did however experience a penalty when including the script in the document itself (I went from a PR3 to a grey bar), so make sure you call it from an external .js file if you want to try it.

Additionally I was not majorly affected by the Florida update.

javascript code:

<!-- hide
if (location.href.indexOf("cache")!= -1)
{
window.location.href="http://www.yourdomain.com/yourpage.htm";
}
// end hide -->

Please test this script on an unimportant page before taking it live, but it works for me. Also please note that you will have to wait for Google's cache to update before you can see it in action.

Kind regards,

Paul