Google setting the clock on the web

Posted: February 2006 C: Internet Posted by: K. Panayotakis

The ‘Google clock’ sets the rhythm of web activities in many aspects.

Web snapshots are indexed with a given frequency, and form the basis on which users search via the search engine. Web snapshots are cached in Google DB, with the same frequency and offered as offline view of pages.

However the clock does not tick at the same speed for all the web community. Incremental addition of ‘fresh’ non-indexed content, is handled in an incremental fashion by Google, giving priority to the higher ranking pages.

On the other hand, the Google crawling pace may increase for a site which gets frequently updated and increasingly referenced (getting more and more inbound links).

Time is also important for Google to build trust on a certain domain. The so called Google ‘sandbox’ effect is an ‘aging filter’ (or a delay factor) applied to newly introduced domains in order to build trust.. Domain age is taken into account by search algorithms, and affects rankings in SERPs.

Techniques to improve accessibility of content are proposed, exploiting the understanding of the indexing mechanism: • Checking web logs to evaluate the crawling period and anticipate the time of the next bot visit. • Anticipating the time of next bot visits, allows to update web page content in advance, in order to feed bots with new content. • Checking pagerank & Backlink updates history, to anticipate the next update (well, the history does not present a clear pattern, nevertheless it can help site development plans).

Moreover, Google ranking algorithms appreciate natural link development patterns, to a newly published page. Building up links in all in one approach may not be appreciated. Timing of new IBL development is therefore important.

But all these tricks can hardly work, unless one has quality content to offer.