The following correspondence is between an out of company SEO consultant and myself concerning the time it takes for google to update and re-cache meta information.
Dear ****,
My name is Hudson Atwell and I have recently been assigned the webmaster position at PostcardPros of Mailfast Inc. out of Birmingham. It's nice to speak with you and I have heard good things about your business.
Well, about a week ago we changed our meta tag title and description, but google doesnt reflect our changes. The webmaster tools section of google says the last time google spidered our page was on the 9th of September(13 days). This is the 3rd day of my third week and sense I have been making daily updates. A web application programs say that our code is safe by w3c standards. Also, last thursday I submitted a sitemap update and sense have submitted updates(true updates) daily (I also submitted this sitemap through the google webmaster tools section).
Anyway, Thanks for your time and the attention it is appreciated.
Hudson Atwell
Internet Relations
Mailfast Inc.
PostcardPros.com
Hi Hudson. Nice to meet you.
There is no hard and fast rule for the timing of the re-indexing. The best way to speed it up is to do what you are doing which is to update the site regularly. When the bot comes back and finds new content, it will schedule to come back sooner.
What types of daily updates are you making? Can you give me some examples? They need to be substantive updates – minor tweaking of words here and there won’t get you where you want to be.
In terms of rankings and why they would improve before the re-index, there are other factors that impact your rankings - off site factors such as inbound links that are not related to the site’s content but who is linking to your site. Those factors can have a big impact on ranking without the re-index.
Just let me know if you have any other questions.
Thanks,
****