Copyright 2005 Log Cabin Rustics If you would like to know when
your site was last indexed by Google, you can find out easily by
using the Google cache command. By typing
?cache:www.logcabinrustics.com? into the Google search engine, I
learned that my site was last indexed yesterday. The Google
cache also displays the web page at the time of indexing, so you
can see the latest version of your page that was indexed by
Google. As some webmasters have learned, the Google cache
feature can be particularly handy when a valuable website and
its backup have been lost due to computer failures. It may be
time-consuming, especially if you have hundreds of pages, but
you can actually retrieve the ?lost? pages from your site in the
form that Google last indexed them. If this doesn?t work, you
might also try the Wayback Machine at archive.org. Forensic
experts have also used the Google cache feature to their
advantage?to retrieve incriminating evidence from the web. This
should be an important reminder to all webmasters not to publish
sensitive material online. A later decision not to publish some
tantalizing tidbit, and the frantic page-pulling that ensues,
may not be enough to erase those ill-said words from the Net.
Webmasters are supposed to be able to block Google from caching
their site by using the ?no cache? tag. However, many don?t even
try this for fear of losing favor in the company's powerful
search rankings. Although Google says the ?no cache? tags don?t
affect web rankings, some webmasters aren?t so sure. Other
Helpful Google Operators Other helpful search engine operators
of particular value to webmasters include: LINK: The LINK
operator, when used in conjunction with your domain name, is
supposed to tell you how many links are pointing to your site.
The syntax for this command is
?link:http://www.thevegetarianexpress.com/. By way of caution,
this only shows how many links indexed by Google that are
linking to you. A more inclusive option is found at the
Marketleap website, where the Link Popularity Tool reports how
many links are pointing to your site from other well-traveled
search engines as well. INURL: Google?s INURL operator will
restrict your search to one site only. For example, typing
?inurl:www.logcabinrustics.com log beds? will bring up the log
beds only on the Log Cabin Rustics furniture website. This is a
particularly helpful option if you are looking for a specific
phrase on one site. INTITLE: The INTITLE operator is helpful if
you are looking for sites with a particular keyword in their
title tag. Use this phrase at Google by typing in
?intitle:furniture? or whatever other search term you are
looking for. Variations of the above themes include the ALLINURL
and ALLINTITLE search operators. These are particularly useful
when you are looking for a string of keywords in either a title
or site. For example, if you start a query with allinurl:,
Google will restrict the results to those with all of the query
words in the url. For instance, [allinurl:logcabinrustics.com
bunk beds] will return only documents that have both "bunk" and
"beds" in the url. Google operators can be especially helpful in
analyzing the web pages of key competitors. To learn more, visit
http://www.google.com/help/operators.html.
About the author:
Cari Haus is webmaster for http://www.logcabinrustics.com, an
online retailer of quality log furniture.
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