Helping new additions get found

Most of the work on Omni Games happens in the database, and when a batch of new titles goes in, I want people to be able to find them. This week I looked at how new additions actually reach search engines, and fixed a few things along the way.

I did think about writing a blog post every time new games are added, and decided against it. The title pages already hold the information, so a post repeating it wouldn't add anything. The blog is better kept for things worth saying. The job was to make sure the title pages themselves get found.

New Additions page

The table on the New Additions page used to send you to a title by clicking anywhere on its row. That still works, but each title name is now a proper link as well. You can ctrl-click or middle-click it to open the title in a new tab, which wasn't possible before. It also means search engines can follow the links, which they couldn't do with the old click-anywhere rows.

Sitemap

The sitemap is the list of pages I hand to search engines so they know what's on the site. Every title page in it now carries the date it was last added or updated. When an import brings in new titles, search engines can see which pages are new or changed and visit those first, instead of treating every page the same.

The sitemap is also much faster to load. It used to be rebuilt from the database every time something requested it. It's now built once at the end of each import and again overnight, and the saved copy is served instantly.

None of this changes what you see on the site day to day. It just means the work that goes into each import should show up in search results sooner.