What determines how often the Google spiders a sitemap?

[wizboy]

I noticed that from the Google Webmaster "Sitemap" list, that Google used to come and read those sitemap files once a day and it is very consistent that it would do that at the same time.

However, I recently noticed that, as noticed on the Google Webmaster, that those sitemap files are only read once every 2 days, and sometimes less often.

Does anyone have any experience of this? Is there any relationship of that to whether Google "thinks the site is good"?

[tedster]

There are many factors involved, not the least of which is available computing cycles on Google's backend.

Is there any relationship of that to whether Google "thinks the site is good"?

Yes - as measured by other people freely linking to the site, making navigational queries, and so on. It also matters how often your content is updated, how well your server holds up under the load of frequent spidering, how accurate your sitemap is, whether your secondary recommendations ore useful (changefreq for instance).

[wizboy]

Thanks, tedster.