Minty fresh question

Is it based on content or timestamp?

[WebWalla]

I have a PR6 site and I've recently changed the index page to pull in some secondary html code using SSI. The secondary code changes on almost a daily basis, meaning that although the index timestamp never changes, the content does.

Will Google regularly "fresh" this site, or will the fact that the timestamp on index.shtml very rarely changes mean it won't get freshed. Basically, is the fresh tag based on timestamp or content?

thanks.

[lazerzubb]

First i suggest reading:
[webmasterworld.com...]

Changing content regualary helps when it comes to getting the "fresh tag", but even though you change content each day, Google might not think your site is important enough (often due to PageRank).

So there is no sure way to do to get a "fresh tag", even though fresh content certainly helps in the quest.
You should be able to see if Google have updated your index page, both by checking your logs (does GoogleBot come by daily?), and by search in Google, and see your indexpage appear, then view if it has a date next to it.

[WebWalla]

Thanks for the response, but it doesn't really answer my question. Yes, I realise that the fresh tag is more likely to be given for sites being regularly updated and those that have a higher PR (which is why I stated that my site is PR6 in the first post).

However, my site is being regularly updated using SSI - the code on the spidered index.shtml page never changes, but the code on the secondary html page which is called using SSI always changes. Basically I just wanted to know if this would qualify as a content change or not.

[EBear]

WebWalla

Google doesn't see or care if your using SSI. All Googlebot sees is the combined result of your index page with the secondary page included in it, exactly what you see when you "View Source" in your browser. Therefore the answer to your question is Yes, changing the included file will be seen as a change in the spidered pages.

[lazerzubb]

Sorry WebWalla.

As EBear states, yes if you change the content of the SSI, Google will see that as changing content on the page.

For a good view of how Googlebot will read your page you can use the
Search engine world - Sim Spider [searchengineworld.com]

[WebWalla]

I hope you're right - personally I thought that the fresh bot would be more likely to simply check the file's timestamp.

If it is based on content, a check has to be done against the cached page and that would take a huge amount of processing power for all the fresh pages. I think I'll just have to wait and see if the page is freshed or not.

[mattglet]

when i try the sim spider, the links that come up on the bottom of the page are as follows:
[default.asp...]
[store...]

is this just the way that the spider does it's thing, or do i have something wrong with my relative linking? thanks in advance

[lazerzubb]

mattglet
That doesn't look correct, it should be something like [domain.com...]

Be sure to check your links are working, and be sure to enter the complete URL in the form, example [domain.com...]