Pro-SEO

Matt Cutts has recently confirmed a change in the way google index web pages. He tells us that the adsense bot (media bot) will now help the google bot index websites.

The adsense bot (media bot) and the google bot used to have very different and separate roles. The adsense bot would only spider web pages with the purpose of delivering relevant adverts to the adsense blocks, and the google bot would only spider the internet for the google search. Their paths never crossed and their roles were separate.

So what does this change mean for webmasters? Well, not much really, It was mainly done as a way to save bandwidth and matt assures us that being spidered by either the adsense bot or regular google bot will not make a difference in how long it takes for your site to be indexed or where you appear in the SERPS.
This is mainly due to the adsense bot updating only the cache. So Instead of the google bot coming to spider your site to update your cache, It will get the cache update from what the adsense bot retrieved.

Should we be worried? Before all the google scaremongers start telling people that the sky is falling and that google are out to kill us, Don't worry, Unless you are already doing something you shouldn't be this will have no negative effect on your SERPS.
One thing you should be aware of though is that google may penalize you if you are currently serving a different page to the adsense bot and to your visitors.
This is sometimes done by webmasters who want to get relevant or targeted adverts on their page, They would simply show the adsense bot a keyword stuffed page and they would show googlebot and visitors a regular page. This now would be seen by google as cloaking since google bot and the adsense bot share a role.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 04, 2006 at 7/04/2006. You can skip to the end and leave a response.