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Here's what I'm asking about...
Last week, Freshbot didn't call round for a few days, and eventually the fresh listing of the What's New page, which was getting a day older each day, disappeared from the Serps - or rather, the listing stayed, in the same place, but with no tell-tale green date.
The date on the entry is back again now - situation back as it was.
My question relates to the period when what was listed had no Fresh Date.
When the green date was missing, the date (I'd put one on the page) shot backwards to Sep 12th - horrendously out of date...
What is the stimulus for Google putting the "fresh" page into the permanent SERPS listing? Surely once it knows the fresh page is genuinely fresh, there's no reason to leave the old one there, especially for 5 weeks. I mean, it's got the new information, why not use it?
Hope that makes sense!
DerekH
Hope that makes sense!
It does! You're not the first to ponder this problem. I'm not sure about the technical aspect, but it works something like this:
Google have a small database, a "fresh" database. When freshbot finds a new page or a new version of an old page, this page or this version of a page is put into that database.
That is part 1 of the story about Google being fresh: the _creation_ of the "fresh" database. But there is of course a 2. part: the _showing_ of fresh pages.
I have never been able to find the pattern in this part. I don't know if anybody outside Google have, but at least it is clear that sometimes Google show fresh results. This has two consequences:
1. The completely new pages from the "fresh" database are shown.
2. The new versions of old pages are shown.
When Google stop showing fresh pages, the new pages disappear completely from the SERPs as there are no old versions to replace them. And the new versions of old pages also disappear, but they are replaced by the old versions from Google's main database.
I hope this is understandable? (I also hope that it is correct!)
