When does Google index a fetched page?

[friendoffood]

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?

[friendoffood]

For those following, see this link where Ryan has provided some interesting answers regarding the cache and the site:www.. command

[friendoffood]

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

[max.favilli]

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>

[friendoffood]

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:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/ferguson/mo/all

but site:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/ferguson/mo/all

Give ONLY that exact same page.  How can that be?

[max.favilli]

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)

[friendoffood]

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.

[max.favilli]

"cache:" is the most update version in google index

if you fix the duplicate content next re-indexing will fix the duplicate content issue

[friendoffood]

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?

[max.favilli]

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.

[friendoffood]

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.

[max.favilli]

Yes, one more idea, if you take the content of the page and you query your site for that content specifically like this:

https://www.google.it/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=site:www.qjamba.com+%22the+lemay+coupons+page+features%22

You find a different page. Looks like those pages are duplicate.

Sorry for missing a w.

[friendoffood]

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?

[max.favilli]

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.

http://imgur.com/O9nezRs

Again I would doubt your logs. You can also check GWT for any manual penalty you may have there.

[friendoffood]

Hi, thanks again.

this gives an error:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.qjamba.com/restaurants-coupons/lemay/mo/all

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?

[max.favilli]

You evidently mistyped the url to check, this is a working example:

<a>http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://moz.com/community/q/when-does-google-index-a-fetched-page#reply_275777</a>

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.

[friendoffood]

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.

[max.favilli]

Open this url on any browser:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.site-you-want-to-check.com/page-you-want-to-check.html

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).