Hi correct me if i'm wrong - in Googles serps didn't it show the date it had crawled each page .. (ie the "cache" date i suppose - i'm sure it used to be down next to where the link for the cached copy of each page is) - also some pages used to have it others didn't - but now it seems no results have it. (well it mentions it on the cache page but not the actual serps) does anyone think this has any siginificance ? probably not but i thought i'd mention it, - or is it all a figment of my imagination??
It's not a figment of your imagination. I know what you are talking about. It was there last night. I have noticed that right before an update the date stops showing. Check back tomorrow.
Hmm, I guess I wasn't paying much attention. The only place I see a date is when I click on the cached link. On the cached page it shows the date of when it was added to the cache (retrieved).
I think it shows the date, if the cache date is within the last few days - about 5, but not sure of the exact figure. I was intrigured by this a few weeks ago, and did a site:www.mydomain.com, and looked at the cache dates of the ones which were showing a date. The cached date matched the date shown in the SERPs, and the only dates I found were within 2 days of my search. Checking my log files, I could see that Googlebot had only recached a few of my pages - those that were showing the date. Everything which didn't show a date had a cache date which was more than 7 days old.
I read your post this morning and checked my sites for fresh dates. Found none but when I looked at retrieved date showing with cached version of page they read Sept. 18. Now when I just checked find they have gone back in time either to Sept 16, Sept. 6, or Sept. 8. Who knows what this means. Shannon
as i mentioned in in my original post i never said it was always there - just sometimes - i guess schlottke is right that it shows on recent caches - however - i have seen caches from as little as 2 days ago that still arn't displaying the date on the serps even though ity's possible that its absence may indicate something - it probably doesn't. the reason i noticed was in the past when i altereds something to do with a page (eg title or keywords) it would show up within about 48 hours in google however i made a change about 4 days ago - and still no sign of it so i checked the age of various cached sites. the cached version of my site is dated as the 7th of september - and it always used to be around 2 days old - however this is probably just as i am not updating it as frequently as i used too.