does google webmasters tell you if google has indexed site?

we just revised the product line and submitted new xml sitemaps. we still rank # 2 out of 10 for our old staple product, but now we added 80 new totally different product line and we are waiting to even rank for these new keywords on google. I can't figure out from google webmasters tool if google has spidered our site.

webmasters shows:
sitemaps > submitted to Google on 7/31/06 , last downloaded shows yesterday
summary > Googlebot has successfully accessed your home page. Last crawl date: Jul 31, 2006
robots.txt analysis > last downloaded: August 7, 2006 8:58:45 PM PDT, Status: 200 succesees

How do you know when Google last indexed your site?
We added inbound links, but google shows zero inbound links, why is that?

thanks

 

Firstly, Google never show all inbound links but rather a seclection of them. Secondly they do not continually update their link stats - unlike msn and yahoo who normally update with each crawl, Google tend to update *visible* backlinks prior to a pagerank update. The googlebot last access date is normally the date I take as Google having checked my site to determine whether a new indexing is required...

If googlebot successfully accessed your page and nothing had changed on the site site - or the sitemap had not been changed, then it is likely nothing else will be indexed by google at that time.

However, if you are running adsense - or even possibly google toolbar, then visiting a page will bring it to the attention of the bots. In the case of adsense pages, they will get indexed but depending on other factors such as pagerank, inbound links etc, it may not show up in the main index for quite some time, but rather return in supplemental results.

If your pagerank of your site is 4+ then the chances of google spidering deeper into the site increase. If you have 0 or 1 pagerank, chances are that you may just get anchor links indexed on the main index with the remainder in supplemental. (this is my theory, and applies more to static websites than dynamic as dynamic ones that change frequently may cause google to continually eat up content being delivered).

With everything though, there will always be some delay from when you get crawled to when it will appear in the main index (if pagerank is high enough otherwise appearing in supplemental ). It will vary as well on the market you are in how long it will take to appear.

 

Thanks for the insight Ganceann,

so is it Jul 31, 2006 from the summary page?
summary > Googlebot has successfully accessed your home page. Last crawl date: Jul 31, 2006

This is a dynamic LAMP site with php sitemap files which generate xml when google accesses those sitemap files.

I do not recall what did summary > google bot successfully accessed your home page date said before 7/31/06. Does is this mean, I will need to track the date on this message ?

not running adsense. The only google tool bar I use is the one on my FF browser.

site PR is a dismal zero despite the fact that I have inbound links from PR5+ sites. How do I tell if any links are indexed on either main index or supplemental?

where do I find supplemental on this google/webmasters tool ?

 

You would normally do the site command at google to see what is listed and what is supplmental.

site:www.example.com

For other inbound links you could check msn (link:sitename)and yahoo (linkdomain:sitename), but google rarely update theirs and do not show all of them anyway - so it is hard to determine which links google see.

You can check the last accessed date if you wish, but it will happen eventually (and different cached date pages will show in the main index anyway - so if you notice googlebot hasn't came back to your site in the summary for a month - then make sure you get more inbound links, more content etc and also updating sitemap when you have a new sitemap available.

 

I think is good for you to see " google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8458

 

Thank you both for your comments

To determine whether your site is currently included in Google's index, search for your site's URL. For example, [ site:www.google.com ] > produced old results.

How do I get my site's updated content into Google? said:

I guess this is what Ganceann refers to when he said "..The googlebot last access date is normally the date I take as Google having checked my site to determine whether a new indexing is required.." The last crawl date reported 7/31/06.

Does Google index dynamic pages? states: "...You can automatically keep us informed of all of your current pages and of any updates you make to those pages..." Since I have submitted php sitemap files which generate xml when google accesses those sitemap files, will google then automatically update for new content?

[link:www.example.com] produced following results:google 0, msn 8 , yahoo 6, alexa 1

I reviewed, what is supplemental result? but it does not tell me how do I access supplemental result?

 

why does Google still show only stale pages in Indexed pages when last crawl shows to be two days ago ?

Prior Crawl was on 7/31, updated site, got crawled 8/11, sitemap gave errors, fixed errors, got crawled 8/21, but "site:www.domain.com" still shows stale old pages and no new pages. After waiting three weeks, it is quite discouraging to determine just what is it going to take to get new content indexed. why is that ?

 

Google just takes a while to show your site in their index ... it is also due to links to your site and various other factors they won't reveal to us

 

let me see if understand the Google process so I know what is it to fix. if Google crawled site on 8/21 and crawl date represents the date when Google determines whether or not to index pages if pages changed since last crawl. Now since pages have in fact changed since last crawl. All submitted sitemaps are dynamic php files which generate valid XML sitemaps on the fly. So new content including relevant articles and products are represented in sitemaps without the need to manually submit sitemap files after each change.

Shouldn't Google have determined that site pages did in fact change when crawled on 8/21 hence Google indexes the revised pages hence index results now reflect the revised pages? Is my understanding of the process wrong, please advise.

thanks for your time

 

It will depend on other variables:

1. The 'trust' google has in your site
2. The inbound links to your site
3. Content being determined as original etc
4. The depth that google index your site (could be PR based or 'trust' based)

Many other factors whether you would see a re-index of your site. Sometimes it may show indexed results after a couple of days, other times it can be 1week - 2 weeks before you notice any changes in indexed pages. Also some actual pages within the site may not have changed enough to be re-indexed while other pages would get re-indexed and therefore cached pages showing multiple different crawl dates.

 

i checked "site://www.domain.com" and this time clicked each cached page.

Is that what you mean by "..cached pages showing multiple different crawl dates" ?

Each indexed page had a different crawl date.
The main site index page had crawl date of 8/21/06 suggesting that it is true that site main index page was indexed on 8/21 however none of the new pages have yet to be indexed.

It is a catch 22, you get indexed if you have high PR, you hget high PR if you get inbound links, yet no one cares to give you reciprocal links much less one way inbound links if your PR is low or zero.

Inbound links from directory sites if I understand PR model correctly offer little contribution to one's PR due to the immense number of outbound links on their pages which dilutes the value of their high PR. If I was to obtain inbound links from high PR directory sites assuming a meager 100 outbound links each, it would take 10 inbound links from 9 PR sites to shift PR by 1 whole number using a simplified formula:

PR = (1-0.85) + 0.85 *summation of ( PR of linking site/no. outbound links on linking site ..........)

plz check me if I err'd

So I focused on relevant content and yet Google still does not weigh this content in its PR.

what do you think of these subscription sites that sell tools to find better keywords like wordtracker? Do I need to do that to improve Google's view of our site?

what may I do next to effect a real improvement in site ranking?

thx again for your time