How often are iCal subscriptions supposed to update? I'm hosting my
iCal calendars on icalx.com and adding them to Google Calendar, but
when I make a change in iCal it doesn't appear on Google Calendar. I
can force it to appear by deleting and adding the calendar again, but
that's not too productive. I've check the files uploaded to icalx.com,
and they're up to date, so Google Calendar must not be noticing any
changes.

I have the same problem.  Also using icalx.com.  It's as if the
calendars are cached on the server and won't refresh.

Ditto.  In other threads I've read people have waited more than 24
hours and still no refresh.  I hope this is addressed soon.

24+ hours and still no refresh, correct.

My only real problem; if I had a 'force refresh' button, then I'd be in
heaven.

I'd also love a refresh button, or better yet, if Google Calendar could
refresh all calendars when you log in.

This may have to do with gCal not 'pinging' the WebDAV-hosted iCal
files for refreshes. I think you have to have gCal build in a refresh
for every time the iCal file is updated or when the user subscribing to
the iCal file via gCal views it. Some sort of ping mechanism a la
Technorati Pings may be a good thing for the gCal tem to implement.

I thought this might be a caching issue, where the server serving the
ical file was adding an expiration / caching info to the header, but a
check of the captured packets from icalx.com did not show this to be
the case. When you subscribe google to a calendar, it does not appear
to need or get write access (webdav for example.)

Perhaps google has a per-host caching time that is imposed per host, or
maybe based on number of calendars served per host. (If google updates
one calendar every 4 hours per site, and a site has 100 calendars ... )
There are many possible reasons for each of your calendars not being
updated. Try serving your calendar from a different host, and see if it
refreshes faster.

I have seen updates work on my web-based ical files, and noticed in a
web server log file, that they are downloaded by google about once
every 4 to 8 hours for my calendars, but I don't use icalx.com.

HTH

Interesting note, and helpful to know that some folks' iCals are
getting pinged, but I'm hosting on my domain's own webDAV server, and
it's only one of 2 calendar files there. I think this might throw a
wrench into your hypothesis. Maybe Google isn't getting out to
everyone's hosted calendar files in the hinterlands of the internet as
often as others?

I think it's just not refreshing the mat all. It it adds the calendar
when you subscribe, and that's it. I've been using the calendar for a
week now my iCal subscriptions have never updated themselves.

Is it possible to get some kind of confirmation that Google recognizes
the problem and is planning to fix it? Or was this the way Google
Calendar was designed?

My iCal subscriptions don't refresh either.

Has anybody tried an XML calendar?  Do they update regularly?

It sure would be nice if someone from Google could confirm the
functionality of the "Public Calendar Address" function.  Is it an
import or should it refresh on a regular basis?

Scott

Thanks everyone for taking the time to report the trouble you're
experiencing with ical subscriptions not updating. We're aware of
this problem and hope to resolve it soon.

We're sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

Thanks, it's great to hear this problem is being addressed. Compliments
to the gCal team.

Yep. I've started looking through the logs, and I find one calendar is
getting hit about once every 3 hours by a google bot, but the other two
are once each day. Now, I am beginning to wornder if the googlebot hits
are from the calendar or as part of a normal site index.

I've altered an event in my conventions export, since it takes the
least time to get refreshed.

With the next refresh from a google bot, I see our ical feed of
conventions was updated. However, our other two feeds (history of
events "what happened today in history" and our other events ical feed)
are not being loaded as frequently.

I guess the google bot like conventions more than history and history
more than events.

It's probably a keyword thing.

Something else to point out:
All three of these ical feeds are in a public forum space that is
semi-frequently indexed by google and other search engines. Also,
robots.txt does not disallow indexing to the ical space.

Add me to the list of people whose subscribed calendars aren't being
updated. One additional data point: I also subscribe to this calendar
via iCal, and it is updating successfully. If I click the link for this
calendar in Google Calendar's "Calendar Settings" page, the plain text
of the .ics file shows the correct data. This suggests it isn't a
problem accessing the data.

I am having the same problem with a room schedule calendar I posted on
our website: it's loaded in GCal but reporting the event schedule from
two days ago.

We think (hope? pray?) this problem has been fixed for the most part
with some recent changes that were made.  In order to avoid directing
too much crawl traffic at any one site, there are some limits that we
place on crawl frequency.  We've revised some of these limits for
popular sharing sites to try to address the issues that people are
having.

But, if other folks are having problems with external calendars not
getting updated like Probity, please let us know (with the URL of the
external calendar that isn't being updated) so we can continue
investigating.

Thanks much.

I have the same problem!

My ICAL link doesn't work :

Calendar Address:
http:[email address]/public/basic.ics

Private Address:
http:[email address]/private-ba3780630a6eaca67a59cf5e65d6e7a8/basic.ics

Thank's in advance!

ALex

It's still not working for me. Yesterday, I subscribed to an Ical
calendar on a webdav server. The initial subscription was fine, but an
amendedment made after i subscribed yesterday still doesn't show in
GCal. A mate subscribed to the same Ical this morning and is still
seeing the out of date entry.

I have sent a bug report. Is there an ETA for this fix?

Thanks for sending us the URLs you were having trouble with, yaf201,
and we're looking into it. If anyone else is noticing a delay in a
public iCal feed updating in Google Calendar, please post the URLs here
and the Calendar team will take a look.

Still not working for
http://www.swanseacamra.org.uk/calendars/CAMRA%20Events.ics. Any ETA on
this being fixed?

We're still investigating the feed that you sent to us, yaf201. While I
don't have a timeframe of when we'll have this resolved, we're looking
into and I'll let you know if there are any updates. If anyone else has
a pubic feed that's not updating, please post it here and we'll take a
look at it. If it's private and you'd prefer to not share it with the
world, you can also send to us at
http://www.google.com/support/calendar/bin/request.py

Just thought I'd chime in and say my feed doesn't work either. It's
currently set to private, but it doesn't work regardless of whether
it's private or public.

http://www.icalx.com/private/surfmonkey89/Home.ics

Feel free to mail me at [email address] with questions; I'm
happy to help.

Well, I think we're all noticing a delay, but we're not sure if that's
"normal" or not. What's the current refresh rate that Google Calendar
is using?

Also, any ICS files that are password protected (even with simple HTTP
style authentication) can't be reached with gCal at the moment. Any
word on whether or not you'll start supporting
http://user:[email address]/path/to/file.ics style URIs in the near
future?

cheers & thanks,
mike

Mike, thanks for asking for clarification and I'm sorry I wasn't
clearer at first. Google Calendar currently updates feeds every three
hours. It sounds like you're noticing a delay and that's normal. If the
delay is significant (as in more than three hours), please let me know.

To answer your second question, Google Calendar currently doesn't
support access to ICS files that are password protected. I can't
provide you with when this feature will be available, but I'll make a
note of it so that we can look into when time permits.

Finally, for those of you who've already submitted your feeds, we're
still investigating, and I really apologize for the delay.