So I tossed together this page for the latest SEO contest. That URL didn't exist ... and then I created a "stub" that said coming soon ... and a few hours after that, the actual content you see now. However, Slurp came by and grabbed the stubb as can be seen in the May 17th log file entries - as noted, the byte count was 47 when it came by - note how the other SE spiders got more. Subsequently, Slurp has come by several times/day ... as have spiders from Google and MSN. Both of the later now index this page (#6/#43 for the contest term) ... but it is still no where to be found in Yahoo ... even if I used a more specialized search that certainly should show it. In the V-E contest, Yahoo was frequently the quickest to update results, so I'm a bit puzzled what happened here. I'm sure it will eventually show up in the Index (probably 5 minutes after I post this!) ... but my theory is perhaps I could have been better off not even having the stub there, since Slurp and Yahoo Search Engine may be "sticking" with that for a bit longer than if they had just gotten the "real" content the next day. Just a random observation that I found interesting ...
Update: I finally showed up in Yahoo ... took a week whereas MSN took two days and Google three days. Yahoo has a pretty recent up-to-date copy, so makes me wonder why Slurp took so long unless the indexing engine itself (versus just the show cache) "stuck" with that initial stub page is spidered first.