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    4. Is Google caching date same as crawling/indexing date?

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    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Is Google caching date same as crawling/indexing date?

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    • Personnel_Concept
      Personnel_Concept last edited by

      If a site is cached on say 9 oct 2012 doesn't that also mean that Google crawled it on same date ? And indexed it on same date?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Host1
        Host1 last edited by

        Well, based on the following post it seems like that is correct:

        Quote:

        When you look at Google's cache of a page (for instance, by using the cache: operator or clicking the Cached link under a URL in the search results), you can see the date that Googlebot retrieved that page. Previously, the date we listed for the page's cache was the date that we last successfully fetched the content of the page. This meant that even if we visited a page very recently, the cache date might be quite a bit older if the page hadn't changed since the previous visit. This made it difficult for webmasters to use the cache date we display to determine Googlebot's most recent visit. Consider the following example:

        1. Googlebot crawls a page on April 12, 2006.
        2. Our cached version of that page notes that "This is G o o g l e's cache of http://www.example.com/ as retrieved on April 12, 2006 20:02:06 GMT."
        3. Periodically, Googlebot checks to see if that page has changed, and each time, receives a Not-Modified response. For instance, on August 27, 2006, Googlebot checks the page, receives a Not-Modified response, and therefore, doesn't download the contents of the page.
        4. On August 28, 2006, our cached version of the page still shows the April 12, 2006 date -- the date we last downloaded the page's contents, even though Googlebot last visited the day before.

        You can find more information about this here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.no/2006/09/better-details-about-when-googlebot.html

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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