It’s a misconception that Google stores and caches every page it crawls. To begin with, one can block out the Google bots, that will obey such commands in a ‘robots.txt’ file stored at your server.
Google does not seem to store very recent content; sometimes, there is a waiting period until these are cached. Lastly, for reasons that I am not familiar with, Google will skip pages regardless of their popularity.
Making a parenthesis, to talk about back ups.
Whether you back up your web site data online or offline, make sure to check the integrity of those back ups. There is a chance that something might have failed, rendering a perfectly-looking archive quite useless.
My web host keeps daily back ups; except that something triggered the feature to be turned off. After a hardware issue that required the change of a drive, they informed me that they had to revert databases to ten days prior.
When Google did not cache one of your pages *and* your back up failed, you are left with a combination of events, that can lead to a small or larger disaster.
While I was able to recover 95% of last week’s posts, an important post about Igal Lichtman vanished for good. I have mixed feelings about its loss, as it was merely a written piece, albeit ‘from the heart’, about a friend and mentor that passed away. It almost feels like a text on a piece of paper, reduced to ashes along with one’s earthly vessel; a farewell that served its purpose.
However, I would still like to get that post back. If you happen to have stored or saved it in its entirety, I will compensate you with $100 – which you can keep or give to the charity of your choice. You can leave a comment with it pasted below, and a PayPal address. Please remember that I only need it once, so only the first such submission will be compensated.
To summarize: back ups mean nothing without verifying your data, or confirming that it’s actually there; and Google is your friend, but not 100% of the time.
————————————
Farewell, Igal
One evening ten years ago, I received a call from Igal Lichtman, who witnessed my frustration unfold at a sales thread on DNForum.
For a man in his mid-30’s that I was, receiving fatherly advice from a someone I hadn’t met in person, felt strange; by the end of our conversation, my tempest had turned into a calm sea.
Igal told me that I should not sweat the small things, particularly those that occur during a faceless encounter involving someone’s keyboard bravado
Seven years later, I met Igal in person, at TRAFFIC in Las Vegas. Upon telling him who I was, he gave me a bear hug that was reassuring and fatherly.
I had no idea that Igal had six children, but this might explain why this burly, shaved-headed man, took the role of fatherhood very seriously.
Igal explained to me, that his “MrsJello” moniker in the domain community, was a word he made up from the first letter of his wife’s and kids’ first names:
Michal, Rochelle, Sahar, Jason, Erica, Lori and Leeshy. And… When its all done and explained most people say “Ohhhh!”
Since 2002, “MrsJello” sold me hundreds of quality domains, many of which earned a healthy profit when I resold them. Others, I still keep to this day, confident that they will be put to good use in the future.
Igal loved to negotiate, closing bulk deals, but he was also very generous. His sales threads on DNForum are legendary; he was kind to let me peruse the lists a couple of hours prior to posting them.
Knowing my selective tendencies, he was confident that I would turn a profit on anything I picked. After dozens of transactions, I acquired the last domain from Igal in July 2012; he seemed to have retracted from domain sales since, but his business ventures, such as TrafficMedia, rolled forward successfully.
In August 2012, Igal launched a redesigned Jerusalem.com portal and app; clearly, the Golden Chalice of his domain portfolio. Igal eventually listened to my advice and re-registered IgalLichtman.com, that became available after remaining in the hands of squatters for a while.
Igal always infused advice in every transaction; at TRAFFIC 2010, where I first presented my ‘brain child’, DomainGang, he told me to focus on those that like what I did, and those that don’t can go f*ck themselves. There is no time for negativity in this world, and time is irreplaceable to waste on stressful agony over things outside of our control.
That same time, I met Igal’s wife, Michal, and two of their children, all of which projected a strong and very humane personality; Michal is a yoga teacher, and their children are students and entrepreneurs.
To me, what matters the most is the human side of the domain investor, trader and mentor, that Igal has been.
To the family of Igal Lichtman, I send my deepest sympathy and condolences. I am honored to have known him. Farewell, Igal. Alav ha-shalom
————————————
If you want, please, give that $100 to an animal rescue association. 🙂
Diego – Thank you so much! I will email you in private. Many, many thanks!