Google cache update

September 8th, 2006

Google have changed the way they display when a page was last “retrieved” on their cached pages.

Before Google would display the last time the page was downloaded by the google bot while being crawled. The Google bot would only download the page if it had changed since the last time it was downloaded. If the bot receives a 304 (Not-Modified) response to a If-Modified-Since qualified request it will not download the page.

Google’s cache pages now display the last time the Google bot accessed the page weather it was downloaded or not. This gives the owner of the page a clearer view of how frequently the Google bot is coming to visit their page.

Read the full low down by Vanessa Fox of Google here.