A few hours after posting the proceeding story on Feb 21st, "CAT 5 Underfoot", I searched Google to see if by some outrageous fortune it had already been found and indexed. I searched on "CAT-5 Underfoot" and, surprisingly enough, there it was, the top search result. Color me impressed. Google is on the ball.
But I then I wondered, is "CAT-5" correct? I did another search, and found that it's usually written just "CAT 5", without the dash. So I logged back in, changed the title from "CAT-5 Underfoot" to "CAT 5 Underfoot," and made a few other edits to the post. I found that even if searched for "CAT 5 Underfoot" it still listed my post as the top search result, even thought the title didn't exactly match.
Out of curiosity I checked the IIS logs and sure enough there were some Googlebot entries, one being:
2008-02-21 00:09:10 66.249.73.242 - 192.168.254.25 80 GET /CAT5Underfoot.aspx - 200 Mozilla/5.0+(compatible;+Googlebot/2.1;++http://www.google.com/bot.html)
I figured I just got lucky and Google crawled my site soon after I posted. I can't imagine that they'd be so frequently crawling my pathetically unknown and seldom visited blog.
Then today, Feb 22nd, I decided to check and see if Google updated the title of the post. I search on "CAT 5 Underfoot". Nothing. I search on "CAT-5 Underfoot". More nothing. "CAT5 Underfoot". Big nothing. I search on "CAT 5 Underfoot Chimpunkan". Still nothing. WTF? Some of my old posts are still indexed, such as "middle name field required", but others are not that were certainly indexed before.
So I go to the Google Webmaster Tools for my site, and find this:
"Googlebot last successfully accessed your home page on Feb 12, 2008"
Really? Even though my own logs indicate that the Googlebot hit my homepage, and the exact page I'm searching for, on Feb 21st?
This can mean a few things:
- Google's Webmaster Tools don't report accurate crawl dates.
- By changing the title from "CAT-5" to "CAT 5" the post somehow became less findable. That doesn't account for my other posts no longer showing up, though.
- That by changing the title from "CAT-5" to "CAT 5" I ran afoul of some Google algorithm no-no and caused some of my posts to fall off the search results. Maybe I revise too much for Google.
- I broke some other Google (undocumented?) rule.
- Google's got issues.
The upshot of all this is that Google is dishonest at worst, capricious and inscrutable at best. Not that we didn't already know that. While this is not necessarily evil, it's sure as Hell annoying. And if you have a business that depends on Google search results and PageRank, you're in bed with a fickle lover.
Update - 2/22/08 10:15AM:
Less than two hours after posting this blog entry, Google has too picked it up and indexed it. Now searching on "CAT 5 underfoot" returns this post. I really can't imagine how Google is able to so quickly crawl and index my blog. Their Googlebot is beyond uber. But the Google Webmaster Tools page still says Feb. 12th as the last date Googlebot crawled this site. Not so uber.
For now, I'll give them a solid 'E' for effort, but not yet for evil.
Update - 2/24/08 10:15AM:
Will the weirndess never cease? As of 2/24/08 10:15AM, searching Google for "CAT 5 Underfoot" or "CAT-5 Underfoot" yields nothing in at least the first five page of results, not even this story, which was the top result for the same search on the 22nd. Amazingly, absolutetly nothing is returned by "CAT 5 Underfoot Chimpunkan". That makes this a two "WTF?!" post.
It must be sweet to be so massively influential yet so completely unaccountable.
Update - 2/25/08 7:40AM:
This morning searching Google for "CAT 5 underfoot" turns up this post, as it did on the 22nd. It's as if the activity of updating the post caused it to bubble up to the top of the search results again. We'll see how long it stays the top result. And for that extra dose of inscrutability, the Google Webmaster Tools pages still says the last time Google crawled my site was 2/12/08. That's after jumping through their "verification" hoops yesterday, too.
Update - 2/25/08 8:32PM:
And, the post is gone again. Seems like a good strategy to keep your Google ranking high is post a lot.