Keeping Google Bot Interested

[javawookie]

Hi All,

after having dissapeared from the index for the last 3 months and Googlebot not coming around at all, Wednesday was the day, GoogleBot retured and reindexed my site.

I am now desperate to keep Googlebot interested, has anyone got any tips to keep it coming back each day.

Java

[deanril]

Have a date that updates every day on your page/pages

Put "News" and "information" some where, freshbot will come by daily

[PatrickDeese]

That's funny. I have been trolling for freshbot for about 2 1/2 months - having my assistant update the index page of a travel site with an "event of the day" and updating the current weather conditions 3 times a day.

Only been freshed twice and it is a PR 5 site.

No worries, I'm patient. Anyhow, it's "good for the visitor". ;P

[g1smd]

It sometimes takes quite a while for freshbot to become really interested. Additionally the fresh listings never used to stick. You woul drop out again after just a few days. The system has changed a bit since a few months ago, with evidence that fresh listings are a bit more sticky these days, but here is a thread [webmasterworld.com] that lists the day to day tribulations of a listing.

[SlowMove]

The weirdest thing just happened. I recently bought a new site with an unused domain name. No backlinks that I was able to find. Nothing. Didn't do anything at all to publicize the site. No links. The site doesn't even have a robots.txt file. I just checked my log files and Googlebot was there snooping around. I don't know if they're using the toolbar or how they got there.

[johnnydequino]

Is that true about News/Information and a date on the home page?

I did notice that last month I put "Information" on my home page and Google found me one month quicker. Maybe that is the reason?

jd

[PatrickDeese]

I just checked my log files and Googlebot was there snooping around.

Maybe someone who installed Alexa toolbar was shopping for domain names and visited your site, or maybe has a pre-existing link to your site, due to a typo or linked to the domain's previous owner.

[nancyb]

I don't think having a date on your home page is necessarily the answer. It may have some impact if other things are also in "google FB sync".

I say this because over the past several years my pages have always had on page dates that were updated every time the page changed (usually several times a month). During the last two years FB has been one of the following:
a frequent visitor with fresh dates in the serps;
an infrequent visitor with frequent fresh dates in the serps;
or, a frequent visitor and NO fresh dates (the case for the last 4-5 months).

There must be several other factors that feed FB and cause visits but these have probably increased since Dominic and Esmerelda.

A date and new content can't hurt, but I doubt it is the only cheese that entices fresh bot.

<added> toolbar was grey or white when the most fresh dates were added to high ranked pages. Now, with constant PR4-5 there have been no fresh dates but consistenlty page one rnak for main kw's.

[captainhannes]

Hi deanril,

> Have a date that updates every day on your page/pages

That's interesting! Any date format that google likes best?
Currently I have my last update dates on some pages in the format DD-MMM-YYYY (i.e. 29-JUN-2003)

> Put "News" and "information" some where, freshbot will come by daily

I recognized this aswell. On a new site of mine I have BREAKING NEWS and by now G comes every 2 days. Neat :)

Thank you!

All the best from Austria,
Hannes.

[takagi]

If you have dynamic pages (like php/asp etc), make sure you not only update the database, but also the 'last modified date' of the php-file.

[g1smd]

Google will not be fooled by just a few words changing on your site. You need to change at least a few paragraphs wholesale, as I found out, as described in an old thread about a new google listing [webmasterworld.com].

As for date formats, Google does not treat a date as a date at all. If you have 2003 May 07 on your page, and someone searches for 2003 May 7th then your site is not a match and does not appear in the SERPs at all. More at some old date format [webmasterworld.com] thread.

[mipapage]

I've had luck getting Freshie to our site by getting a new link or two and having some fresh content, in particular content "above the fold"...

[conor]

Certainly, the last modified header is important. In an ASP, CF, PHP its fairly esay to set your lat modofoed headers to be hourly, daily etc ...