Question about Google Cache.

[DSL Guy]

Is it odd, to say the least, that a cache of a web page created in 2004 would have a Google cache of pages dated December 31, 1969 at 11:59 pm? The page itself reflects the 2004 date though.

Any comments?

[webado]

Originally Posted by DSL Guy

Is it odd to, say the least, that a cache of a web page created in 2004 would have a Google cache of pages dated December 31, 1969 at 11:59 pm? The page itself reflects the 2004 date though.

Any comments?

Haha! This sounds like in fact there was no date information stored, December 31 1969 11:59pm has long been used as T0 in many computer systems, all subsequent dates being calculated based on that.

[DSL Guy]

Originally Posted by chrisooc

used as T0 in many computer systems, all subsequent dates being calculated based on that.

Chrisooc

Please explain to me what TO is?

[webado]

Originally Posted by DSL Guy

Chrisooc

Please explain to me what TO is?

That's T0 "T Zero" - the starting point in time for a system or a project or whatever.

[DSL Guy]

I'm just a little confused, but no biggie, why they would use 12/31/69 instead of the actual date. The date on my web page would be the actual date. Thanks Chrisooc.

[webado]

Originally Posted by DSL Guy

I'm just a little confused, but no biggie, why they would use 12/31/69 instead of the actual date. The date on my web page would be the actual date. Thanks Chrisooc.

That's because that some dates are really stoerd as a displacement off an origin, an initial assumed first date. They are not stored as you see them. Those would be system dates, thus 1969 is a good starting date since pc's, the web and all that didn't exist as far back as that. This is so that calculations based on date and time can be performed more easily.

A date on your pc is not stored as you see it. It's stored as a very large number representing the number of milliseconds ellapsed from the original date which may well translate to 1969/12/31/23:59:999 to mean T zero. Add 1 millisecond to it and it becomes 1970/01/01/00:00:000. I don't know if this same origin is used in all systems, but I know many mainframe systems have been using it.

[DSL Guy]

This is all really interesting to know. I know it gets deeper than this but at my level of expertise much goes right by me.

I am really more interested in using the cache date to determine when I should re-submit my page(s). My sites recently went thru some index changes on the major engines. Somehow my titles were changed and keywords. Much of what was indexed is gone. Not certain how this happened but I have my hosting company technicians looking into it.


I've heard that all I can do now is redo my meta tags, re-submit to engines, and in about 30 days my sites should come back - hopefully with interest paid. I think I have a meta tag "robots revisit in 25 days". Does that mean they'll be back on their own in 25 days from the last snapshot?

[webado]

Originally Posted by DSL Guy

This is all really interesting to know. I know it gets deeper than this but at my level of expertise much goes right by me.

I am really more interested in using the cache date to determine when I should re-submit my page(s). My sites recently went thru some index changes on the major engines. Somehow my titles were changed and keywords. Much of what was indexed is gone. Not certain how this happened but I have my hosting company technicians looking into it.


I've heard that all I can do now is redo my meta tags, re-submit to engines, and in about 30 days my sites should come back - hopefully with interest paid. I think I have a meta tag "robots revisit in 25 days". Does that mean they'll be back on their own in 25 days from the last snapshot?

That meta tag is pretty debatable if it truly has any effect. But that would be the idea, yes, they'll come back 25 days after the last time they went there.

Why don't you remove that so they'll maybe come back faster? I get the Google spider, I swear, every day, from the looks of it. I don't need it but it just visits. I just put that kind of meta tag to stem the flow and space the visits a bit more if it should obey the directives.

It is my experience so far that whether or not you submit your sites to search engines, it takes about the same time for them to react, say a month or two for a new site, unless perhaps you pay. And once you're in their cross-hairs you stay there and get visited over and over.

As for using the cached image, maye it's only useful to trace back a page that no longer exists, not sure if you can recreate that easily a past image.

Take a look at http://www.archive.org/web/web.php and see what you can find out about your old pages.