When does Google index a fetched page?
-
I have seen where it will index on of my pages within 5 minutes of fetching, but have also read that it can take a day. I'm on day #2 and it appears that it has still not re-indexed 15 pages that I fetched. I changed the meta-description in all of them, and added content to nearly all of them, but none of those changes are showing when I do a site:www.site/page
I'm trying to test changes in this manner, so it is important for me to know WHEN a fetched page has been indexed, or at least IF it has. How can I tell what is going on?
-
For those following, see this link where Ryan has provided some interesting answers regarding the cache and the site:www.. command
-
I'm going to post a question about the non-cached as upon digging I'm not finding an answer.
And, I'm reading where it seems to take a couple of days before indexing, but seeing something strange that makes it confusing:,
This page was cached a few days ago: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/wildwood/mo/all
The paragraphs wording content that starts with 'The Wildwood coupons page' was added as a test just 3 days ago and then I ran a fetch. When I do a Google search for phrases in it, it does show up in google results (like qjamba wildwood buried by the large national chains). So, it looks like it indexed the new content.
But if you search for wildwood qjamba restaurants cafes the result Google shows includes the word diners that is gone from the cached content (it was previously in the meta description tag)! But if you then search wildwood qjamba restaurants diners it doesn't come up! So, this seems to indicate that the algorithm was applied to the cached file, but that the DISPLAY by Google when the user does a search is still of older content that isn't even in the new cached file! Very odd.
I was thinking I could put changes on pages and test the effect on search results 1 or 2 days after fetching, but maybe it isn't that simple. Or maybe it is but is just hard to tell because of the timing of what Google is displaying.
I appreciate your feedback. I have H2 first on some pages because H1 was pretty big. I thought I read once that the main thing isn't if you start with H1 or H2 but that you never want to put an H1 after an H2.
I'm blocking the cut and paste just to make it harder for a copycat to pull the info. Maybe overkill though.
Thanks again, Ted
-
That's interesting because according to google own words:
Google takes a snapshot of each page examined as it crawls the web and caches these as a back-up in case the original page is unavailable. If you click on the "Cached" link, you will see the web page as it looked when we indexed it. The cached content is the content Google uses to judge whether this page is a relevant match for your query.
Source: http://www.google.com.au/help/features.html
If I look for that page using a fragment of the <title>(site:http://www.qjamba.com/ "Ferguson, MO Restaurant") I can find it, so it's in the index.</p> <p>Or maybe not, because if you search for this query <strong>"Ferguson, MO Restaurant" 19 coupons</strong> (bold part quotes included) you are not among the results. So it seems (I didn't know) that using site: is showing results which are not in the index... But I would ask in <a href="https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!forum/websearch">google search product forum</a>.</p> <p>As far as I know you can use meta tag to avoid archiving in google cache but your page doesn't have a googlebot meta tag. So <strong>I have no idea why is not showing</strong>.</p> <p>But if I was you I would dig further. By the way the html of these pages is quite weird, I didn't spend much time looking at it, but there's no H1, you are blocking cut&paste with js... Accessibility is a factor in google algo.</p></title>
-
Thanks.. That does help..
<<if 404="" you="" have="" a="" for="" the="" cache:="" command="" that="" page="" is="" not="" indexed,="" if="" searching="" content="" of="" using="" site:="" find="" different="" page,="" it="" means="" other="" indexed="" (and="" one="" possible="" explanation="" duplicate="" issue)="">></if>
THIS page gives a 404:
but site:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/ferguson/mo/all
Give ONLY that exact same page. How can that be?
-
I am not sure I understood your doubt but I will try to answer.
site://foo.com
is giving you a number of indexed page, is presumably the number of pages from that site in the index, it normally differs from page indexed count in GWT, so both are probably not all that accurate
site://foo.com "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
searches among the indexed pages for that site the ones containing that precise sentence
webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://foo.com/bar
check the last indexed version of a specific page
if you have a 404 for the cache: command that page is not indexed, if searching for the content of that page using site: you find a different page, it means that other page is indexed for that content (and one possible explanation for that is a duplicate content issue)
-
Thanks Massimiliano. I'll give you a 'good' answer here, and cross fingers that this next round will work. I still don't understand the timing on site:www , nor what page+features is all about. I thought site:www was supposed to be the method people use to see what is currently indexed.
-
"cache:" is the most update version in google index
if you fix the duplicate content next re-indexing will fix the duplicate content issue
-
I have a bigger problem than I realized:
I accidentally put duplicate content in my subcategory pages that was just meant for category pages. It's about 100-150 pages, and many of them have been crawled in the last few days. I have already changed the program so those pages don't have that content. Will I get penalized by Google-- de-indexed? Or should I be ok going forward because the next time they crawl it will be gone?
I'm going to start over with the fetching since I made that mistake but can you address the following just so when I get back to this spot I maybe understand better?:
1. When I type into the google searchbar lemay mo restaurant coupons smoothies qjamba
the description it gives is <cite class="_Rm">www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/lemay/mo/smoothies</cite>The Lemay coupons page features both national franchise printable restaurant coupons for companies such as KFC, Long John Silver's, and O'Charlies and ...
BUT when I do a site:<cite class="_Rm">www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/lemay/mo/smoothies</cite>it gives the description found in the meta description tag: www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/.../smoothie...Traduci questa pagina Find Lemay all-free printable and mobile coupons for Smoothies, and more.
It looks like site:www does NOT always give the most recent indexed content since 'The Lemay coupons page...' is the content I added 2 days ago for testing! Maybe that's because Lemay was one of the urls that I inadvertently created duplicate content for.
2. Are ANY of the cache command, page+features command, or site:www supposed to be the most recent indexed content?
-
I am assuming it's duplicate, it can be de-indexed for other reasons and the other page is returned because has the same paragraphs in it. But if you ran a couple of crawling reports like moz/semrush etc.. And they signal these pages as duplicates it may be the issue.
-
thanks.
That's weird because doing the site: command separately for that first page for the /smoothies gives different content than for /all :
site:www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/lemay/mo/smoothies
site:www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/lemay/mo/all
But why would that 'page+features' command show the same description when the description in reality is different? This seems like a different issue than my op, but maybe it is related somehow--even if not I prob should still understand it.
-
Yes, one more idea, if you take the content of the page and you query your site for that content specifically like this:
You find a different page. Looks like those pages are duplicate.
Sorry for missing a w.
-
you are missing a w there. site:www and you have site:ww
That's why I'm so confused--it appears to be indexed from the past, they are in my dbase table with the date and time crawled -- right after the fetch --, and there is no manual penalty in webmaster tools.
Yet there is no sign it re-indexed after crawling 2 days ago now. I could resubmit (there are 15 pages I fetched), but I'm not expecting a different response and need to understand what is happening in order to use this approach to test SEO changes.
thanks for sticking with this. Any more ideas on what is happening?
-
Well, that's a http 404 status code, which means the page was not found, in other words it's not in google index.
Please note if you type site:ww.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/lemay/mo/all you find nothing see image below.
Again I would doubt your logs. You can also check GWT for any manual penalty you may have there.
-
Hi, thanks again.
this gives an error:
but the page exists, AND site:www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/lemay/mo/all
has a result, so I'm not sure what a missing cache means in this case..
The log shows that it was crawled right after it was fetched but the result for site:... doesn't reflect the changes on the page. so it appears not to have been re-indexed yet, but why not in the cache?
-
You evidently mistyped the url to check, this is a working example:
If your new content is not there, it have not been indexed yet, if your logs says it was crawled two days ago I would start doubting the logs.
-
HI Massimiliano,
Thanks for your reply.
I'm getting an error in both FF and Chrome with this in the address bar. Have I misunderstood?
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.mysite.com/mypage
Is the command (assuming I can get it to work) supposed to show when the page was indexed, or last crawled?
I am storing when it crawls, but am wondering about the couple of days part, since it has been 2 days now and when I first did it it was re-indexing within 5 minutes a few days ago.
-
Open this url on any browser:
You can reasonably take that as the date when the page was last indexed.
You could also programmatically store the last google bot visit per page, just checking user-agent of page request. Or just analyze your web server logs to get that info out on a per page basis. And add a couple of days just to have a buffer (even google need a little processing time to generate its index).
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Huge Google index on E-commerce site
Hi Guys, Refering back to my original post I would first like to thank you guys for all the advice. We implemented canonical url's all over the site and noindexed some url's with robots.txt and the site already went from 100.000+ url's indexed to 87.000 urls indexed in GWT. My question: Is there way to speed this up?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ssiebn7
I do know about the way to remove url's from index (with noindex of robots.txt condition) but this is a very intensive way to do so. I was hoping you guys maybe have a solution for this.. 🙂0 -
How to remove wrong crawled domain from Google index
Hello, I'm running a Wordpress multisite. When I create a new site for a client, we do the preparation using the multisite domain address (ex: cameleor.cobea.be). To keep the site protected we use the "multisite privacy" plugin which allows us to restrict the site to admin only. When site is ready we a domain mapping plugin to redirect the client domain to the multisite (ex: cameleor.com). Unfortunately, recently we switched our domain mappin plugin by another one and 2 sites got crawled by Google on their multsite address as well. So now when you type "cameleor" in Google you get the 2 domains in SERPS (see here http://screencast.com/t/0wzdrYSR). It's been 2 weeks or so that we fixed the plugin issue and now cameleor.cobea.be is redirected to the correct address cameleor.com. My question: how can I get rid of those wrong urls ? I can't remove it in Google Webmaster Tools as they belong to another domain (cf. cameleor.cobea.be for which I can't get authenticated) and I wonder if will ever get removed from index as they still redirect to something (no error to the eyes of Google)..? Does anybody has an idea or a solution for me please ? Thank you very much for your help Regards Jean-Louis
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JeanlouisSEO0 -
Best possible linking on site with 100K indexed pages
Hello All, First of all I would like to thank everybody here for sharing such great knowledge with such amazing and heartfelt passion.It really is good to see. Thank you. My story / question: I recently sold a site with more than 100k pages indexed in Google. I was allowed to keep links on the site.These links being actual anchor text links on both the home page as well on the 100k news articles. On top of that, my site syndicates its rss feed (Just links and titles, no content) to this page. However, the new owner made a mess, and now the site could possibly be seen as bad linking to my site. Google tells me within webmasters that this particular site gives me more than 400K backlinks. I have NEVER received one single notice from Google that I have bad links. That first. But, I was worried that this page could have been the reason why MY site tanked as bad as it did. It's the only source linking so massive to me. Just a few days ago, I got in contact with the new site owner. And he has taken my offer to help him 'better' his site. Although getting the site up to date for him is my main purpose, since I am there, I will also put effort in to optimizing the links back to my site. My question: What would be the best to do for my 'most SEO gain' out of this? The site is a news paper type of site, catering for news within the exact niche my site is trying to rank. Difference being, his is a news site, mine is not. It is commercial. Once I fix his site, there will be regular news updates all within the niche we both are in. Regularly as in several times per day. It's news. In the niche. Should I leave my rss feed in the side bars of all the content? Should I leave an achor text link on the sidebar (on all news etc.) If so: there can be just one keyword... 407K pages linking with just 1 kw?? Should I keep it to just one link on the home page? I would love to hear what you guys think. (My domain is from 2001. Like a quality wine. However, still tanked like a submarine.) ALL SEO reports I got here are now Grade A. The site is finally fully optimized. Truly nice to have that confirmation. Now I hope someone will be able to tell me what is best to do, in order to get the most SEO gain out of this for my site. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | richardo24hr0 -
Google+ Local pages under review. How long does this take?
I have a couple Google+ local pages that have been placed under review. Does anyone have experience regarding the time frame of this reveiw process. Google says to give it a few weeks, but one page has been under review for four weeks now. How long should I wait for Google to review them before I delete the page and start over?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | VentaMarketing0 -
Why is my XML sitemap ranking on the first page of google for 100s of key words versus the actual relevant page?
I still need this question answerd and I know it's something I must have changed. But google is ranking my sitemap for 100s of key terms versus the actual page. It's great to be on the first page but not my site map...... Geeeez.....
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ursalesguru0 -
Sitemaps / Google Indexing / Submitted
We just submitted a new sitemap to google for our new rails app - http://www.thesquarefoot.com/sitemap.xml Which has over 1,400 pages, however Google is only seeing 114. About 1,200 are in the listings folder / 250 blog posts / and 15 landing pages. Any help would be appreciated! Aron sitemap.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheSquareFoot0 -
Fetch as GoogleBot "Unreachable Page"
Hi, We are suddenly having an error "Unreachable Page" when any page of our site is accessed as Googlebot from webmaster tools. There are no DNS errors shown in "Crawl Errors". We have two web servers named web1 and web2 which are controlled by a software load balancer HAProxy. The same network configuration has been working for over a year now and never had any GoogleBot errors before 21st of this month. We tried to check if there could be any error in sitemap, .htaccess or robots.txt by excluding the loadbalancer and pointing DNS to web1 and web2 directly and googlebot was able to access the pages properly and there was no error. But when loadbalancer was made active again by pointing the DNS to it, the "unreachable page" started appearing again. This very same configuration has been working properly for over a year till 21st of this month. Website is properly accessible from browser and there are no DNS errors either as shown by "Crawl Errors". Can you guide me about how to diagnose the issue. I've tried all sorts of combinations, even removed the firewall but no success. Is there any way to get more details about error instead of just "Unreachable Page" error ? Regards, shaz
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shaz_lhr0 -
Pop Up Pages Being Indexed, Seen As Duplicate Content
I offer users the opportunity to email and embed images from my website. (See this page http://www.andertoons.com/cartoon/6246/ and look under the large image for "Email to a Friend" and "Get Embed HTML" links.) But I'm seeing the ensuing pop-up pages (Ex: http://www.andertoons.com/embed/5231/?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=370&width=700&modal=true and http://www.andertoons.com/email/6246/?KeepThis=true&TB_iframe=true&height=432&width=700&modal=true) showing up in Google. Even worse, I think they're seen as duplicate content. How should I deal with this?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andertoons0