[OneGoodMan]

I had my traffic going down badly with no clear reason, I had a little hard time with Facebook Connect, giving on some pages Unresponsive script.

I didn't realize how bad can this be, but it made a major damage on traffic specially from Google.

I fixed the error today, and my traffic start getting back to normal.

Be careful with these crone jobs they can cause serious damage with Google if they are not functioning well.

[zed]

wtf is a crone job?

[Renaissance-Design]

zed, on 06 February 2012 - 08:07 AM, said:

wtf is a crone job?

Selling fruit? Cackling?

I know - maybe it runs periodically and removes typos.

[OneGoodMan]

I apologize for the delay in reply but had a hard time getting online.

Cron jobs are scripts that do specific tasks on your website. For example, you want something marked completed after x number of time, this will be called cron job.

Also, if you familiar with setting up things like Payments (using Paypal as an example), to know that somebody completed the payment before your process the order.

[rallport]

OneGoodMan, on 08 February 2012 - 08:14 AM, said:

I apologize for the delay in reply but had a hard time getting online.

Cron jobs are scripts that do specific tasks on your website. For example, you want something marked completed after x number of time, this will be called cron job.

Also, if you familiar with setting up things like Payments (using Paypal as an example), to know that somebody completed the payment before your process the order.

But a cron job wouldn't (and shouldn't) be running when each page loads, or when you reference an external script on a webpage.

Paypal doesn't a cron job either - it's uses something IPN - essentially a script on your site paypal posts payment info back to9 after a payment has been made.

[OneGoodMan]

rallport, on 08 February 2012 - 02:32 PM, said:

But a cron job wouldn't (and shouldn't) be running when each page loads, or when you reference an external script on a webpage.

Paypal doesn't a cron job either - it's uses something IPN - essentially a script on your site paypal posts payment info back to9 after a payment has been made.

tasks that require timely update will require cron job, for example : a job should be marked deliver or late after x number of days (these jobs usually are require load on the page).

I used PayPal as an example for payments but it is not the case with other websites (I personally using 3 payment gtes on one website).

My main point is that scripts and cron jobs that takes long time (too long to response), will affect your website ranking on websites like Google, so make sure to avoid them and reduce the response time on the page

[zed]

Why would a search engine bot be doing any processing on your site that starts a cron job?

[OneGoodMan]

zed, on 08 February 2012 - 07:23 PM, said:

Why would a search engine bot be doing any processing on your site that starts a cron job?

The search engine bot is concerned about your page load. let us say it would take 3 seconds to load, that will affect your website ranking.

Scripts and cron jobs are not the issue but the load time is. If you got a broken one or unresponsive in any page, check web page optimization and you will see it goes for seconds

[zed]

So why the thread title if cron jobs aren't an issue. Yes load times are but I don't see how google is going to find out you have a cron job running without actually doing some processing on your page.

[OneGoodMan]

zed, i think you misunderstand me, I said cron job can kill your website, but I didn't say it certainly well

I am trying to explain the damage could be caused by ignoring the crone job timing.

[Sogo7]

The biggest problem with retrieving dynamic content from external websites is that the structure of the target may change and breaks all your regex. It's not really the cron timers fault but the script being called by cron is where the error log will point.

Behind the scenes of my little job hunting project a similiar process takes place with a cron job banging away at a fetch_data script and the output is stored in the database.

When a results page is initially loaded the stored content is shown but an AJAX call also fires the same fetch_data script and when that comes back with the most recent data a few seconds later this gets swapped into the page for the human visitor to see (& database gets updated).

If googlebot runs over the site a server side trip goes off and calls the same fetch_data script. We then decide if the bot gets fed the existing stored content or is forced to wait for the new data thus controlling what google percieves as the loading time.

That all may seem a lot of messing about to display dynamic content but has several advantages;

1.Visitor is happy because they had something to look at while waiting.
2.Google is happy because it finds almost fresh new content & a quick load time.
3.If the cron job or fetch_data script ever fail the site would still function for visitors by showing the last lot of information.

This post has been edited by Sogo7: 08 February 2012 - 09:52 PM

[rallport]

OneGoodMan, on 08 February 2012 - 06:46 PM, said:

My main point is that scripts and cron jobs that takes long time (too long to response), will affect your website ranking on websites like Google, so make sure to avoid them and reduce the response time on the page

* shakes head, self face palms, lets out huge sigh *

That's one of the most incorrect statements I've read in this forum for a while. Someone needs to remove that as it;s just plain incorrect lol.

EDIT: just had a look at one of my bigger ecommerce sites hosted on a VPS. I have a cron job running every 5 mins that takes on average 10 seconds to run. Pages load almost instantly and there are no issues with site speed at all. Maybe if you're hosting your site yourself, on your neightbours wireless network, on a 2 Meg internet connection on a 486, then you'd get slow down if multiple thikngs were happening at once.

This post has been edited by rallport: 09 February 2012 - 07:13 PM