What is Google's definition of fresh content?

[drumat5280]

I have a dynamic home page where I display my listings (not many listings yet).

I hear that Google loves fresh content - does googlebot see that my site is a different file size and spider the page because the listings have changed or does it look at the last modified date, notice it hasn't changed and then not spider the page?

[Jenny Barclay]

Don't know what last modified date is, but we have found that a change of 120 characters is sufficient to get a daily BOT.

[drumat5280]

"Last modified date" is the date stamp in the head of your code that shows when the last time the document was saved.

[sward]

I always thought it was "Last modified date" but I could be wrong. I sometimes refresh my pages even if I have not made any changes. Interesting about the 120 characters though. Anybody else have an idea?

[rogerdan]

You found that 120 characters is sufficient. Did you do it on a trial and error basis? Where did you got this figure from ? Care to share it with us ?

[Jenny Barclay]

Simple really, we have masses of test sites, domains bought in groups of 6.
We test 3 against 3.

e.g. use of H1

We write all six with identical layout using 6 different themes, and then leave for two updates. We then change 3 in an identical way, e.g H2 instead of H1, sent to me as cut and paste, and then wait for 2 updates.

In this way we have found since before Florida that most conjecture by webmasters around the world was based on BMS rather than fact.


On the question of changes to atract the BOT
We found that e.g 50 characters of change did not produce a daily BOT, 150 certainly did, and we finished up with the fact that approx. 120 does the trick.

Obviously, having made the decision to try this, there might be quite a wait before the next visit, when it can decide whether or not to come back on a regular basis.

We have sites that get the BOT once or twice a month, and sites that get every page daily.

Jenny

[drumat5280]

Jenny thanks to the info!

Two additional questions:

1. Is that 120 char of text as seen on the browser or text/source code?

2. Is that 120 char generated from a dynamic page or are you updating the "last modified" time stamp or both?

[Jenny Barclay]

As I mentioned before ....no idea what "last modified" is, and no idea what HTML is, we are all mathematicians not webmasters.

120 characters of text is what I was referring to.
The easiest way is to add and remove daily an extra sentence.

We also know absolutely zero about real estate.

We got involved after Florida, when we were told that real estate had been banged. We put up a couple of test sites that became No.1 in G for their search terms without backlinks. All that changed on March 12th. We were continuing with this site as part of the project. Unfortunately the testing on this site, which has involved 9 months work, was buggered by being added to ODP, which removes this site from the test.

[sarahk]

As I mentioned before ....no idea what "last modified" is, and no idea what HTML is, we are all mathematicians not webmasters.

I don't know the answer to this but in the days of freshbot and deepbot, two different types of googlebot crawlers freshbot used to come and see if the front page had changed - and would test last modified and tell deepbot if the site was worth a thorough crawl. Deepbot hasn't been seen for 18 months now and freshbot indexes entire sites. The name on the indexer used to be the same, they operated from diff. IP ranges.

Now the inherent flaw with last modified, as I'm sure the Google techs know, is that sites are modular and my index page may "include" several other pages or a database and therefore while the file's timestamp may never change my site may.

Sarah

[Jenny Barclay]

Both BOTs 81 and 82 are still crawling happily.
Whether or not they perform the precise function as before is not yet known.