Dating Blog Posts & How Fast Google Picks up on New Pages
-
I had until a few months ago included the original post date of a new blog post on the site. I then removed it and none of my results in Google now include the blog post date, although for some (for articles written about events) Google includes the date of the event where you would usually see the post date. Since I did this, it seems like new blog posts are taking longer to rank on Google, some results are ranking well, and others declined relative to what I would have previously expected.
What's the best thing to be doing? To include a date (considering a lot of my content is not time-relevant) or to keep it as it is now?
The second thing, is I often go through and update my articles with new information and re-post it in my rss feed etc - ie the date becomes new again. How does Google treat this?
Any ideas or comments would be great!
Thanks
-
It is unlikely but for some things possible especially when people are planning trips far in advance (before the info on this years events is available which can sometimes only be a few weeks in advance).
You mean basically copy the content, update it, and put in a redirect?
Thanks
-
How likely is it for users to desire to see the pages on past years?
If not at all, then remove the old pages from your site. Issue solved.
If you feel users may still want to see the old pages, you can canonicalize them to the new page. Google will then not view the old pages as duplicate content.
-
Mm yeah maybe with a link at the top of old ones to say - this applies to 2011, see here for 4th of July 2012?
Then I'd end up with lots of pages with similar competing titles?
It is a difficult one, no?
-
If it was my site, there would likely be a new article each year.
4th of July Celebration!
When: July 4th, 2012
Where: Central Park, NY
Performing Artists will be: Pink, Fleetwood Mac, ....
Tickets are $20
[Insert as many relevant details about the event as possible such as: where to park, how much parking will cost, the time it starts / ends, ?jobs, ?handicap accessibility, etc]
The past year pages would likely 301 redirect to the current year's page. If you felt the need to keep the pages from prior years, then they could possibly canonical to the current year.
-
I'll give you an example and you'll understand what I mean
For instance - I have articles about events which take place every year. Obviously each year there are new details, new elements, new performers etc and the article is totally relevant for the homepage and for the feeds etc again.
I have just been updating and re-posting the pages for the new year (to stop having duplicate pages on the site...)
-
I don't care for the manner in which the articles are being recycled. If the articles are 90% the same and you are just adding a snippet of new info, there is no reason to re-post them at all.
Unless you are posting fresh, new articles then it makes sense that a category page would be crawled faster if your site's navigation is structured with a drill-down style where you click on a category from the home page, then the article.
-
Thanks. It's kind of weird what's happening because my category pages are showing up with the new content faster than the actual article.
I'm not 'manipulating' the date - I'm just not including it. The issue with 'recycling old articles' is that I am updating articles regularly with new information - to add a new article isn't good for the site because it's 90% repetition. Then, when I update them, I re-post them because what's new is important for readers, followers etc, to see. What do you think?
Thanks
-
Dating Blog Posts & How Fast Google Picks up on New Pages
This Q&A post shows as 4 hours old and it is already in Google search results: goo.gl/QHjXb. Google has the ability to pick up new pages in minutes for sites they deem important.
With respect to dates on articles, there are many attempts at manipulation and Google is pretty darn good at detecting them. Some examples:
-
sites which offer a date on their home page or articles that always updates to the current date
-
sites which recycle old articles by updating the date, or republish older articles with a new date
-
sites which do not offer any date for articles in an attempt to hide the age of the information
In brief, I would recommend including the date on all published information. The date provides a critical perspective on information. An example: when I was in school I learned there was 9 planets in our solar system. If I write that "fact" down, the date of the information is important. It seems Pluto has been demoted and there are now only 8 planets in our solar system.
Google looks at some keywords as being more time sensitive and the results of searches are affected by the dates involved.
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is it better to find a page without the desired content, or not find the page?
Are there any studies that show which is best? If you find my page but not the specific thing you want on it, you may still find something of value. But, if you don't you may associate my site with poor results, which can be worse than finding what you want at a competitor site. IOW maybe it is best to have pages that ONLY and ALWAYS have the content desired. What do the studies suggest? I'm asking because I have content that maybe 1/3 of the time exists and 2/3 of the time doesn't...think 'out of stock' products. So, I'm wondering if I should look into removing the page from being indexed during the 2/3 or should keep it. If I remove it then my concern is whether I lose the history/age factor that I've read Google finds important for credibility. Your thoughts?
Search Behavior | | friendoffood0 -
Google De-Indexed Our SIte for Branded Terms?
Hello all, As of 10am Pacific on September 12th, 2013, my team has noticed that our site, www.wirelessemporium.com, does not show up on the first 5 or 6 pages of SERPs for branded terms like "wireless emporium." We have not received any messages from Google via Webmaster Tools regarding this. Major activity that we've been doing to our site is updating content, meta tags, and h1 tags, along with removing/301 redirecting certain pages that did not meet Google quality guidelines. We've also been purging our backlink portfolio of toxic links and URLs, both manually and through the disavow tool. No blackhat has been done to this site for a very long time (more than 8 months now). One thing to note is that we did have a manual spam penalty placed on us back in July of 2012, it expired in early August of 2013 after a reconsideration request was submitted, and a 2nd manual spam penalty was placed on us again later that month. We are submitting a 2nd reconsideration request this Monday. Could this or the recent Panda update have anything to with this? We are very much in need of opinions as to why this is happening to our site. 5adbd14a31de3a78b998df94f0b6d2be
Search Behavior | | eugeneku0 -
Google Analytics Search Engine Optimisation Report
Hello, Quick question. How much data should be available within Google Analytics within the Search Engine Optimisation Reports? I was always of the impression it was 6 months, however the data available as of this date only extends back to January 1st 2013. Thanks,
Search Behavior | | HelloAlba0 -
Meta description of homepage, changing to latest post
Here's something strange I noticed. The meta description for Engadget when doing a Google search is their latest blog entry. However, if you land on the homepage and view source the page, the meta description is a standard one for their homepage. My first impressions : Wha? How? and Wha? Could it be because it is a "news" site, Google goes "go on, have custom meta descriptions of your latest entry.." Thoughts?
Search Behavior | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Google Local
I am new to Google Local and just bagged a project. Can somebody guide me how to go about it. Is Google Local all about listing the business in Directory and Classified sites with complete address and profile? Any help will be highly appreciated.
Search Behavior | | KS__0 -
Google Rel="Next" & Rel="Prev"
Hello, I have a catalogue website and I am implementing the rel="next" and rel="prev" to the website. My question is that we do have a view all page also, which apparently Google likes over a 'page1'.. Should I add the canonical to this page? I already have it set to WEBSITEURL/sonos (which is going well) I don’t want to have to change this to [URL]sonos/view-all (which is my view all link) as the first page is getting ranked well I am then telling Google no, the view all page is the parent. Any advice would be very much appreciated. Thanks Rick
Search Behavior | | Lantec0 -
Google Places, NAP, multiple address with one phone number
How sensitive do you think the Google Places NAP algorithm is? If I have different Google Places pages for one client with multiple locations, but the same phone number for all locations with different addresses, will this hurt my Google Places ranking or organic webpage result?
Search Behavior | | Mike-i0 -
How to get more page impressions?
I'm wondering about one of our web-projects. There's a lot of good interesting content but the statistics of page impressions don't make me very happy. Each user is visiting just 1,5 sites per visit. That's really not much. We have other (similar) projects where this problem does not exist, where user are visiting a lot more sites per visit. I have no idea what could be the reason for it. Do you know / use some tricks to get more page impressions? Thank you, Sally
Search Behavior | | SallyO0