Because all the indexing is done by Google instead of by my little server, I no longer have to worry about the configuration and scheduling of local indexing. However, this gives me less control over how often my site is crawled. New pages that are posted on my site may not get spidered immediately.
Is that a problem? Well, it depends on the interval between spidering. If it's once every week or two then that should work fine. But if it occurs only once per semester, that's less useful. How can I tell?
This is a new page, first published at 1pm on January 20, 2005. I'm going to include terms on this page which do not appear on any other document on this site. Then every morning I'll check to see when that term begins to show up at Google.
Here we go:
Updates
January 27, 2005...1pm:
Your search - zebra - did not match any documents.
Google did not spider my site during the past 168 hours.
February 1, 2005...9am:
Your search - zebra - did not match any documents.
Google did not spider my site during the past 284 hours.
February 8, 2005...2pm:
Your search - zebra - did not match any documents.
Google did not spider my site during the past 457 hours.
February 15, 2005...10am: Success!
Professor Guy Speaks
... Updates. January 27, 2005...1pm: Your search - zebra - did not match any documents. ...
February 1, 2005...9am: Your search - zebra - did not match any documents. ...
professorguy.com/essays/goog.html - 6k -
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This site was spidered during the week of February 8. One more data point and the frequency of spidering will be known. Here's another set of terms:
February 22, 2005...4pm: Success!
Professor Guy Speaks
... of spidering will be known. Here's another set of terms: Wildebeest; Flapjack;
Liebetrau. Updates. Send email to guy@professorguy.com.
professorguy.com/essays/goog.html - 7k -
Cached -
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This site was spidered during the week of February 15. This site is spidered once every 2 or 3 weeks. This is perfect for my needs.