Fresh Tag
In search engine optimization, a fresh tag is a date-marking for websites. The fresh tag indicates the day and time when a website was last detected by Google’s automatic search programs and stored in the Google cache. In other words, it is a kind of date stamp. It appears in the SERPs for some webpages after the file size and URL. Users therefore can find out what version of a web page is displayed from the search engine cache.
News
The fresh tag date does not always correspond to the last update of a website. It merely indicates what version is in Google’s cache. Fresh tags are therefore not to be confused with new content which can greatly help the ranking of a domain.
A fresh tag is important for search engine users, however. The more recent the date stamp is of the desired site, the more likely it is that the version is still current. Therefore, pages with current fresh tags from Google are also preferred in the ranking. Websites that are classified as important with frequent changes in content receives a new fresh tag from Google every day.
Deactivation
A fresh tag displayed by Google can show users they are viewing recently synchronized content, nevertheless, it may not be helpful for everyone. If a website provides a lot of brand-new information every day, search engine users might be directed via the Google cache to an outdated version. Google’s crawlers were perhaps not there yet since the last modification. Therefore, you can prevent caching of your website with the meta tag “no-cache.” That way, the clicked page is not retrieved from the Google cache, but always loaded current from your own server. You will not achieve the fastest loading speed by using this command, however.
Web Links
- Discussion Forum at WebmasterWorld on the Concept and Function of Fresh Tags
- Google’s Matt Cutts on the Frequency of Google Indexing