Sort By Date

[danf]

I want to utilize the sort by date functionality, so I understand that I need to set the Last-Modified metafield.

But my case is that I have articles that were published on a certain date and I want to use that date for search result sorting purposes, but the page itself might be updated because someone left a comment or something like that, so I don't want other search engines to not index the page, I also want Zoom to continually index it for changes - even though the last modified will remain as the publish date of the article.

So, my plan is to do a check on the user-agent and only add a Last-Modified metafield if the user-agent is Zoom. That way it shouldn't affect outside search engines.


But my question: Will zoom continue to check for updates and re-index this page, or will it not index since the Last-Modified hasn't changed.

What I am trying to accomplish, is that in the results when zoom_sort=1, that results are sorted by the article publish date, not the last-modified date.

Ideally, If there were a way to define a ZOOMSORTDATE header or something that could override the Last-Modified date if present.

[Ray]

So, my plan is to do a check on the user-agent and only add a Last-Modified metafield if the user-agent is Zoom. That way it shouldn't affect outside search engines.

But my question: Will zoom continue to check for updates and re-index this page, or will it not index since the Last-Modified hasn't changed.

Are you talking about Incremental Update? If so, then yes. This relies on the last-modified date.

But for normal re-indexing, it does not matter what the last-modified date is.

Ideally, If there were a way to define a ZOOMSORTDATE header or something that could override the Last-Modified date if present.

That might be something to consider in the future if there is enough demand. Or perhaps a custom meta field that is sortable would also be a good alternative.