Homepage's Cache Date keeps rolling back - what to make of it?

[1script]

Hi guys, I know it might sound like I'm splitting hairs here but here is a phenomenon I cannot explain and therefore I'm getting concerned. Wonder if someone has experienced it and could offer some advice on what to make of it.

I have a rather busy forum site and I check its standing with Google very often, most every day pretty much. I check the Google cache date among other things because it appears to me that stale cache would be an early indication of a potential problem with the site. It could by itself be a questionable premise but at least it makes me pay attention to the cache date hence this post :)

For the last couple of days I saw the homepage being cached on the 2nd of January, 2010. I check it today and it's back to December 28th, 2009. This has happened in late December couple times already.

Between 12/28 and 01/02 there have been dozens of messages posted on that forum site and so I am concerned the new posts are not being properly indexed. Googlebot does come for approx 2000 pages every day but it most of the time gets old ones, the ones that have already been indexed. Needless to say I'm interested to see the new messages indexed earlier while the subject is still fresh.

So, what do you guys make of this cache date rollback? Would you pay attention to it if it was a site important to you?

Thanks!

[aristotle]

Is it possible that the older cache date came from a data center that hasn't been updated with the latest info?

[1script]

@aristotle - Love your nick!

regarding the actual subject matter though - I am not sure, haven't looked into what datacenter it comes from. Using google.com and not sure what IP it resolves to at that particular time. But once rolled back, the date of cache stays stable for 10 days or so until it eventually catches up only to be rolled back again. I would think in two weeks time the datacenters would all sync together. Also, the "better" (as in newer) cache date is also not a fluke - it stays for a few days - maybe a week - before rolling back.

It appears to me as if G thinks the two-week old version of the page is somehow better than the newer one. What other explanation could there be?

[tedster]

In my experience, the publicly visible cache date does not necessarily reflect which version of the page is being ranked by Google's non-public back end.

[walkman]

The fresh tag IMO is the #1 sign that Google likes your site (probably has trust, plenty of links and content changes daily). I have a 13 year old name and recently started to join social media and get some links, google started to cache it daily. Traffic also is up by 30%.

But it can just be a temporary Google hiccup. How's traffic?