If I revert to an old version of Sitemap, will Google figure it out?

[doughayman]

Hi,

I was rocked by June 4th SERPs debacle, and am trying a myriad of things, to restore rankings.

One of the things that I am doing is restoring some old copies of web pages, that potentially may have effected me negatively.

In my Google Sitemap, I am reverting to old version, by reverting "LASTMOD" date to be the original date, instead of today's date.

Is Googlebot smart enough to recognize that that file has changed, when my new Sitemap is read, since the last time Google spidered it ?

For example, if the following date stamps exist for a given file:

Last Modification Date in Sitemap: 2008-07-02
Original File Date being Reverted to: 2008-05-02
Today's Date: 2008-08-04

If I rollback my file to the "2008-05-02" version, and put the "2008-05-02" date stamp in my sitemap, is Google smart enough to recognize that the date of this file is earlier than the most recent spidering of this file, and will this trigger an eventual download ? Or must I make a small change to this file (say, add a space character somewhere), and datestamp it with today's date in my Sitemap to force Google to recognize that this file has changed ?

Thanks in advance.

Doug

[tedster]

Yes, Google will figure out that the file has changed. However a date that is EARLIER than G's existing cache data will not trigger a new spidering of the url. Still, Google spiders based on more than just your sitempa, so all should be well - in terms of spidering. (I'm not saying that will fix you June 4 ranking fall, however.)