Site Update Notification Agents typically run on client web servers to locally collate change information. The source of a change in content or presentation can be varied and disparate. The architecture of the client-side agents is designed to provide for a very flexible plug-together component system consisting of one or more source-specific agents along with a master agent – the SUNA Master – that is responsible for collating information from all other local agents and transmitting to the internet hosted SUNS server.

By having the agent running on the client web server, the system can respond to real changes made to the source document or dependent data that make up the source document.

This is contrary to current techniques that identify changes in the resultant HTML document that is actually delivered from the web server in response to a HTTP GET request. Changes in the client delivered HTML document can be as a result of randomised content on each request, such as time-sensitive advertising, which does not change the user-valued content of the page and should not therefore be considered a reason to download and re-index the page.

Agent Collaboration

Site Update Notification Agents work together to consolidate changes made to website source files (HTML, Server-Side Scripts, Images and deliverable Client-Side Scripts such as JavaScript).

The Agents provide a series of capabilities to identify changes in source files, database records and external websites.

Read more about the individual agents that are available.