Google Cache vs. Rankings - is Goog cache latest ranked data?

[scanreg]

If your site is cached on 01/01/2001 by Google, does that mean that your site has not been spidered since then, as well?

In other words, are your search rankings based solely on the cached page, or are your search rankings more actively evaluated beyond just the cached date?

I'm trying to clear up whether the latest cached page is when Goog (and other search engines) have last evaluated and ranked sites.

Many thanks :)

[cyque]

I generally find on my sites that the cache is indeed the last time that Google spidered and re-evaluated a particular page. However, this data is sometimes not updated until several days after a new spider takes place.

[otk567]

Google has quite a nice little resource for those that dont know which will tell you when your site was last spidered as well as lots of other cool data like your rankings for various keywords and what keywords are often used to find your site.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

You can also ping them from there I believe when you update your site or add a sitemap which is also a good idea ive found...though after working my socks off last week writing several articles to put on my site thinking perhaps that would help me out they merely dropped me from spot 8 to 16! So frankly if it were not for the fact that everybody and their brother uses google i would just give up on them! LOL :-)

Andy

[scanreg]

Thanks, both :)