Instructing Google to "no cache"

[PatrickDeese]

I got knocked out of a #1 slot by a new competitor who has instructed via a meta tag that Google not cache their index page (no other pages have this meta tag).

I can only assume this is because they are using some cloaking technique or other "bait and switch" tactic to get better rankings.

Can anyone suggest a legit reason why they would have *only* the index page excluded from the cache?

All's fair in love and war, so I am not vengeful or anything like that, I just find it odd. Odd behavior leads me to be suspicious.

[jomaxx]

Nobody has to justify their use of that tag. Google's cacheing is somewhat controversial and could easily be considered a violation of copyright. Does the snippet in the SERP match the page or not?

[Nick_W]

Loads of legit reasons:

• Part of that page is dynamic
  
• They change it often with sensitive info that needs to be accurate
  
• They have content of a legal nature and again, need to keep it accurate

All of that may well be misinformed or wrong but there are many legitimat 'thoughts' (right or wrong) that may lead someone to do that..

Nick

[PatrickDeese]

Nobody has to justify their use of that tag.... Does the snippet in the SERP match the page or not?

Point given. The snippet matches for the most part.

• Part of that page is dynamic
  
• They change it often with sensitive info that needs to be accurate
  
• They have content of a legal nature and again, need to keep it accurate

#1 - no
#2 - maybe
#3 - no

The term is SEO related, and obviously I am interested how they have managed to beat me, going from "#1000000000000" to #1 in a month.

I can't especially see anything on their static page that convinces me that they should be beating me, however, since the page has:

<META NAME="GOOGLEBOT" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE">

This makes me suspicious. Other sites cache pages as well (ATW, for instance), so why single out Google especially, unless perhaps you are doing something you don't want to show in the cache....

Anyhow, no other page on the site has this instruction, that is the main reason I find it suspect. (plus they are beating me ;) )

[Nick_W]

Freshbot?

Nick

[PatrickDeese]

I haven't seen any fresh tags, plus the Google snippet is showing content from my site that was updated in the beginning of April, so I assume that they aren't being freshbotted either.

[onionrep]

For competetive serps, Id like to see google mark down pages that use this tag.

This would make those who use it for questionable reasons, think twice.

[jomaxx]

I don't agree. Even though some spammers use the tag, I don't think you could convincingly argue that cached sites produce better SERP's than nocache sites on the whole - and that is really the main thing Google is focused on.

Besides, right now one of their strongest legal defenses for the right to cache web pages is that webmasters can turn cacheing off easily. If Google, with its dominating market presence, penalized sites that did that, a lot of people would have no choice but to remove their nocache meta tags, and they'd be plenty sore about it.