DeOptimization

Hi Roger,

You can place that code in a test page and then view the source to see the output.

<META HTTP-EQUIV="expires" CONTENT="Feb, 15 Aug 2008 12:12:27 GMT">
This indicates that the document containing this META tag will expire at this date. If the document is requested after this date, the browser should load a new copy from the server, instead of using the copy in its cache.Best regards,

Jim.

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Firewall Test Internet Speed Test Sitemap Generator

Jim,
Sorry to drive you crazy on this:
1) On browsers - If the browser sees in its cache an expiration date for a site that is older than the current date, it will go to the net for an update of the site. The sooner an expiration date used the sooner (the more frequently) the browser will see that the expiration date it has for a site is older than the current date and therefore will go to the internet to the site for the latest copy.


2)On bobots, robots, spiders and other critters - If a bot sees you have an expiration date on a site that is older than the current date, chances are it won't come back to see if you added anything new to the site. If you have an expiration date in the near future (ie a day, 8 hours, 5 minutes) bots will comeback on or after that near future expiration date for the new information. The sooner the near future expiration date the more likely a bot will visit your site for more information.

3) Since bots can't record that much information in one visit anyway, if you have a site with 1000s of words and you make additions or changes every other day, then the expiration date should be how many minutes, hours, or days in the future?

Thanks,

Roger

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Nutritional Deficiencies Cause Many Medical
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No problem Roger,

1) Yup - that is the way it's supposed to work. Not all browsers are created equal

2) It will come back, but when we don't know - depends on the bot. You are giving the bot guidelines, but it's up to the critters to decide if they will honor them.
Right.
Yes, but bots like Google will have a base time for revisiting. They may have a base time of one day and ignore your revisit of one hour setting. Imagine the bot listened to everyone and everyone had a revisit of 5 minutes, the bot would implode and we can only imagine what the results of that would be

3) This all depends on the content - if it changes often, then place the appropriate expiration time and let Google and others figure out how to handle it.

I have a theory that Google looks at a page and comes up with a checksum (can't think of the exact term right now) and grabs some key information. During the spider process, it compares it's checksum to that of the web page and when different, it knows a change has occurred and flags it for further examination.

If the page's content has changed, then you're ranking may be moved way down for a time until Google can figure out what really changed. If you add content to the existing unchanged content, such as a comment to a post or page, (post stays the same, comment is new) then you're OK. It all depends on your site (blog, static website, etc) and Google has a flag for that as well. For example, Google may know your site is a blog and that your posts / pages may change content from time to time, but that your achieved pages will never change, and if they do, then something must be up.

People link to a site's content because they are talking about a related topic. If the content has changed in a significant way, then that link may no longer be accurate.

No one knows for sure how Google programs there bots and I've not heard back from anyone on my request to review they code

Regards,

Jim.

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Firewall Test Internet Speed Test Sitemap Generator

Definitely on the mark with this Jim:

If the page's content has changed, then you're ranking may be moved way down for a time until Google can figure out what really changed. If you add content to the existing unchanged content, such as a comment to a post or page, (post stays the same, comment is new) then you're OK. It all depends on your site (blog, static website, etc) and Google has a flag for that as well. For example, Google may know your site is a blog and that your posts / pages may change content from time to time, but that your achieved pages will never change, and if they do, then something must be up.

As I make changes to existing content from new techniques and lessons learned, I end up touching a significant number of product pages and I always see a drop in rank until Google figures out what has changed. The rebound is usually good when it happens, so I thank you for that!

Loretta

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