ETags - Is it worth it?

[Svetoslav]

I've been meaning to try out the eTag entity for a while now. They seem like a great way to notify the bot when to and when not to fetch your content. Fruthermore, it is impliad that proxy servers can make use of them and help your site load faster by not fetching a newer copy if one is not available.

This is not something that is easy to test on a small site and implementation on bigger sites is in my case a one way road and a few weeks in hell with the developers on staff.

• Will eTags take some load off the a site with a lot of traffic and dynamically generated content?
• Is this a good practice, as far as search engines are concerned?

[aarondicks]

I assume by this post that it has positive implications, however I must admin that I'm not too familiar with eTags.

SEOtown - article on eTags