Encourage regular indexing by Google

There are a number of ways that you can monitor how often Google visits and indexes your website. You should use this information and then try to ensure that your site is frequently updated to encourage this event to happen as often as possible, since this can bring a number of benefits.

Gone are the days of the ‘Google Dance’ which would happen every 4-6 weeks and mark a major update of Google’s index, as well as fevered discussion on the SEO forums about the changes it would bring. Google now tries to index the web more frequently so that its search index is continually being updated, with a particular focus on websites that refresh their content on a regular basis.

You will sometimes notice on the Google search results that some listings include a recent date at the end of the URL line, in green. This indicates websites that tend to be indexed on a regular basis and the date that Google’s spider last recorded the page. You can also click on the ‘Cached’ link under each of the search result listings, which will display the copy of the page that Google holds in its index, plus the date that the page was last visited.

In addition, if you’ve signed up to Google’s Webmaster tools and Sitemaps option, you can see the date that Google last indexed your site. Your website statistics package may also show data on recent visits by Googlebot, the main Google ‘spider’ that trawls the web and captures information on each website that it visits.

Ideally you should be encouraging Google to reindex your site on a regular basis, for a number of reasons. Firstly, there may be some small benefit within the ranking results for sites that are frequently updated and seen as providing ‘fresh’ content. This has not been directly proven as a factor, but there are indicative signs that it carries some importance within Google’s current ranking algorithms.

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, by regularly updating your site, either just through the Home Page or through pages within the site, you will encourage regular visits by the Google spider, with as many as 2 or 3 updates per week. This can be hugely beneficial if you are adding new content or pages to your site, as it will enable them to be indexed quickly.

It can also be useful if you are testing changes to your site optimisation and ranking performance, since your amendments will be indexed by Google within days. You can then assess the impact on your ranking results of these changes and then revert back, or retain the improvements, within a short period of time, rather than waiting weeks, or even months, for the next update to visit your site.

To find out more about the advantages of updating your site for regular Google indexing, please contact us now.

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