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SeachReturn utilizes a "cache stamp" time-stamp code that allows us to determine when pages were fetched by search engines. We then can determine (with reasonable accuracy) what page versions are responsible for rankings that we care for.

Those who want to know precisely when a certain page was fetched, can always visit the cache link from a SERP, (which may display date and or time information). This cannot be completely relied upon since not all major search engines display complete information when you visit their cache. Worse still, date information can sometimes be misleading with data-center discrepancies, and consider that page versions responsible for particular rankings may not be the page code stored in the search engine's cache index anyway.

To ensure you can at least match the date information with a search engine cache version, place a time-stamp on your site's pages. There are many ways to implement a time-stamp. If you are handy with PHP, for instance, this should be a snap. Fetch the time from the web server, and format it the way you want to display it on your site. You can also choose to adjust the time-stamp for your time-zone if you want. We choose not to do this as explained below. Accuracy is key whenever hunting down specifics, (which can happen far more often than you would like).

We use Server Side Includes (SSI) with the Apache web server to formulate our cache stamp. You can see the result at the bottom of SearchReturn pages. There are advantages to doing it this way, so you may want to learn SSI directives for your web server platform. You will want a time-format statement (config timefmt) which (for us) looks like this:

%a %b %d %y, %I:%M %p %Z

The first part (before the comma) formats the day month and year, and the second part formats the time. That directive produces an acceptable time-stamp for us. We then use the SSI statement followed by another that fetches the DATE_LOCAL environment variable to get the local server time. We host in Pittsburgh with Pair Networks and prefer to keep the Eastern time-zone for consistency so we can match our cache stamp information exactly with server log data and track spidering spotting.

SearchReturn readers get carefully selected search engine news and information, actionable marketing tips and expert advice with site owner Disa Johnson.