Last Modified Header and SEO

Can anyone confirm or negate some theories about the LMH being important in getting indexed, staying indexed and ranking?

People using PHP or other dynamics (that are noth returning LMH info) are they ranking as well, staying indexed as long or getting indexed sooner or later.

We discussing these on our server and looking at LMH for spider visits. Trying to see if maybe a spider would walk away from a site that has not had data modified to try to save time etc..... 3

thoughts....

 

It does seem to have an effect on spidering frequency, however, I have plenty of dynamic sites that rank well, with the LMH being rarely changed. It may have some small positive effect on rankings, but it definitely doesn't seem to hurt rankings if it doesn't change often. (in my experience)

 

My sites are both PHP with a lot of dynamic content. They are getting spidered by Google on a daily basis. Indexing and ranking has not been an issue either.

 

Orion mentioned over at SearchEngineWatch that LMH was part of the TLA (Temporal Link Analysis) model that was patented by IBM earlier this year. TLA probably isn't in place, but I'm sure it's something that algo engineers are aware of, so LMHs could be something they are using or will consider using in the future.

I also have PHP sites that get spidered with great frequency, but they don't rank well - I doubt LMHs have anything to do with that though...

 

What about a spider visiting (say one of G's as an example), they hit a static page that has a last modified header of July 4th, 1997. Now, for time purposes only, why would you want your spider crawling that site if it has not been updated in 7 years? Wouldn't you rather get to the 8 billion + pages that may be updated with 'fresh' content.

 

Try this, NC.

Pick a site that has been and is being crawled currently, and for which you have logs on Googlebot visits.

Don't make any actual changes to the site. Simply open the home page in your editor and resave it (depending on the editor you may need to do something like add in a space or a letter and then delete it again to be allowed to save it). Now, upload that home page to the site.

Do this every day for a period of time (probably at least a month). Remember, don't make any actual changes to the page and do not touch other pages on that site during this time.

Do you see an increase in frequency of Googlebot visits?

I think you will...

 

I was going to ask a question about my site rankings but, after reading some of the post, its over my head.....

 

Rob, it isn't over your head at all. Some of the jargon can be confusing but it's really not rocket science...

Go ahead and ask your question.

 

I was going to ask if you have a site like mine with no real rankings how do I get inbound links to help with rankings, as I am always told I need inbound links.

 

1. Submit your site to directories, starting with the free ones. That will get you inbound links which in time will increase your PR and at that point other sites may find the idea of linking to you more attractive. There is a thread in this forum about directories which accept submissions -- many other forums have a similar list going.

2. Find sites which have some relevance to yours and which you think might be of interest to your visitors -- a related product or service, or a "companion" product or service (e.g., if your site is about furniture, sites that deal with refinishing products or paint or other home decoration / home renovation products and services). Place a link to that site on a suitable page on your site (e.g., "Recommended Services and Products" or something). Then email the webmaster of the site, tell him/her that you have visited the site (and really do that, by the way, so you genuinely know something about the site) and that you have linked to the site (give the URL for the page containing the link), and request a link back to you.

 

I think LMH is taken into account when google is checking for fresh content, but they do check on page as well, i would sat its only part of the chech as the LMH info wont be changed for people using includes to update content.

 

Are you certain of that?

 

Fairly sure, I can test it out if you want.

 

I beleive with PHP pages for example (not html pages containing php but a real php script that outputs html) you need to specifically output a LMH

It doesnt have any effect currently but i remember a google engineer calling for seos and webmasters to use it as it "helps them spider" - make of that what you will....

 

Is a LMH truly necessary for PHP pages?

If so, how would you code the LMH so that it took into account the content delivered by "includes" and not just the page?

 

Im just wondering would using httaccess to append a header or a footer file to a PHP page have any effect on LMH

 

Googlebot has no access to the filesystem so it has no knowledge of the last modified date except the header send by the server. You can set the last modified header in php, to make this experiment much easier.
This may increase the spider frequency, but I would not except the algo gives any new-content-related SERP boost, unless the content was actually modified.

 

I would not accept "the algo gives any new-content-related SERP boost" whether or not the content were actually modified. It may increase spidering frequency. That's all.

 

So your not worried about TLA being backdated?

I think google puts slight weight on fresh content, probably depending on how much there is.

 

Huh?

(with an extra "Huh?" added to meet minimum post length)