I know this might seem like a fairly run-of-the-mill question but I can't seem to find a common answer.

I use the cross-sell Recommended Products on my home page. I keep wanting to change these products every few days or so. However I don't think this gives enough time for the engines to see the content. I've searched this question on Google but can't find anything pertaining to e-commerce.

What do you guys suggest?

Here's my quick take on it.

There isn't a common answer or a one size fits all rule. Also don't just concentrate on the home page. The nature of e-commerce websites is that content, primarily products, will keep changing.

First rule is not to make unnecessary changes or additions every hour of every day just for the sake of change. Also, don't go stuffing the website with content loaded with keywords; that's a sure fire way of 'self-harm'!

Remember that a website that is updated once a day, or at least two to three times a week, is considered by search engines to be a frequently updated site. The bot's that crawl the web are constantly searching for web pages that are new or updated and then adds the fresh content to the search engines index.

Updating a websites content often with information that is deemed reliable and valuable give it a far better chance of search engines ranking your site higher with each update.

IMHO trial & error plays a big part in a lot of this website stuff.


Will - Bolton Manchester UK

Thanks V45! Excellent advice, exactly what I was looking for. I have to stop myself from changing my Recommended products too often. I just want to give visitors a taste of everything I offer, I have quite a bit of products.

I will try to keep it down to a few updates per week (or more). I didn't know if the engines liked to see some more concrete content rather than constant changing/rotating content. With an ecommerce site, it seems that the engines would like to see new content more often...if they recognize it is ecommerce.

I do understand what your saying though..keep it fresh!

On our home page, we show about 50 "recently purchased products - set to 1 day, so it's always changing.
Then we have about 100 recommended products that we change up here and there. Some of them are new products and others are seasonal.
I mostly consider this food for SE's
My thoughts have always been that if the SE's see your content changes often, they will come back and check for changes more often.
Click my user name for a link to my site.

That's the first time I've been to your website dbdave. You have an excellent Alexa rating. Kudos! My website used to be in the top 500k in Alexa, way back in 2006. Now it hovers around 3-4mil.

Anyway, I would like to increase the amount of Recommended products displayed on my home page. Right now it is set at 9. I cant remember where to set this...is it in vsadmin/includes?

Below is what I use on my home page.
If you want to impact home page crosssell only, them make the changes there in the home page.