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
-
No Index thousands of thin content pages?
Hello all! I'm working on a site that features a service marketed to community leaders that allows the citizens of that community log 311 type issues such as potholes, broken streetlights, etc. The "marketing" front of the site is 10-12 pages of content to be optimized for the community leader searchers however, as you can imagine there are thousands and thousands of pages of one or two line complaints such as, "There is a pothole on Main St. and 3rd." These complaint pages are not about the service, and I'm thinking not helpful to my end goal of gaining awareness of the service through search for the community leaders. Community leaders are searching for "311 request service", not "potholes on main street". Should all of these "complaint" pages be NOINDEX'd? What if there are a number of quality links pointing to the complaint pages? Do I have to worry about losing Domain Authority if I do NOINDEX them? Thanks for any input. Ken
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KenSchaefer0 -
Google does not index image sitemap
Hi, we put an image sitemap in the searchconsole/webmastertools http://www.sillasdepaseo.es/sillasdepaseo/sitemap-images.xml it contains only the indexed products and all images on the pages. We also claimed the CDN in the searchconsole http://media.sillasdepaseo.es/ It has been 2 weeks now, Google indexes the pages, but not the images. What can we do? Thanks in advance. Dieter Lang
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Storesco0 -
HTTP Pages Indexed as HTTPS
My site used to be entirely HTTPS. I switched months ago so that all links in the pages that the public has access to are now http only. But I see now that when I do a site:www.qjamba.com, the results include many pages with https in the beginning (including the home page!), which is not what I want. I can redirect to http but that doesn't remove https from the indexing, right? How do I solve this problem? sample of results: Qjamba: Free Local and Online Coupons, coupon codes ... **<cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/</cite>**One and Done savings. Printable coupons and coupon codes for thousands of local and online merchants. No signups, just click and save. Chicnova online coupons and shopping - Qjamba **<cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/Chicnova</cite>**Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Chicnova. Coupon codes for online discounts on Apparel & Accessories products. Singlehop online coupons and shopping - Qjamba <cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/singlehop</cite>Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Singlehop. Coupon codes for online discounts on Business & Industrial, Service products. Automotix online coupons and shopping - Qjamba <cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/automotix</cite>Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Automotix. Coupon codes for online discounts on Vehicles & Parts products. Online Hockey Savings: Free Local Fast | Qjamba **<cite class="_Rm">www.qjamba.com/online-shopping/hockey</cite>**Find big online savings at popular and specialty stores on Hockey, and more. Hitcase online coupons and shopping - Qjamba **<cite class="_Rm">www.qjamba.com/online-savings/hitcase</cite>**Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Hitcase. Coupon codes for online discounts on Electronics, Cameras & Optics products. Avanquest online coupons and shopping - Qjamba <cite class="_Rm">https://www.qjamba.com/online-savings/avanquest</cite>Online Coupons and Shopping Savings for Avanquest. Coupon codes for online discounts on Software products.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | friendoffood0 -
Apps content Google indexation ?
I read some months back that Google was indexing the apps content to display it into its SERP. Does anyone got any update on this recently ? I'll be very interesting to know more on it 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JoomGeek0 -
Home page not being indexed
Hi Moz crew. I have two sites (one is a client's and one is mine). They are both Wordpress sites and both are hosted on WP Engine. They have both been set up for a long time, and are "on-page" optimized. Pages from each site are indexed, but Google is not indexing the homepage for either site. Just to be clear - I can set up and work on a Wordpress site, but am not a programmer. Both seem to be fine according to my Moz dashboard. I have Webmaster tools set up for each - and as far as I can tell (definitely not an exper in webmaster tools) they are okay. I have done the obvious and checked that the the box preventing Google from crawling is not checked, and I believe I have set up the proper re-directs and canonicals.Thanks in advance! Brent
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EchelonSEO0 -
Getting Pages Requiring Login Indexed
Somehow certain newspapers' webpages show up in the index but require login. My client has a whole section of the site that requires a login (registration is free), and we'd love to get that content indexed. The developer offered to remove the login requirement for specific user agents (eg Googlebot, et al.). I am afraid this might get us penalized. Any insight?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TheEspresseo0 -
How to have pages re-indexed
Hi, my hosting company has blocked one my web site seeing it has performance problem. Result of that, it is now reactivated but my pages had to be reindexed. I have added my web site to Google Webmaster tool and I have submitted my site map. After few days it is saying: 103 number of URLs provided 39 URLs indexed I know Google doesn't promesse to index every page but do you know any way to increase my chance to get all my pages indexed? By the way, that site include pages and post (blog). Thanks for your help ! Nancy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EnigmaSolution0 -
Sitemap - % of URL's in Google Index?
What is the average % of links from a sitemap that are included in the Google index? Obviously want to aim for 100% of the sitemap urls to be indexed, is this realistic?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | stats440