To update or not to update news URLs ?
-
We manage a huge daily news website in my small country - keeping this a bit mysterious in case competitors are reading
Our URL structure is www.companyname.com/news/categoryofnews/title-of-article?id=articleid
In this hyperreactive news world, title of articles change frequently (may be ten times a day for the main stories). The question we debate is : should we reflect the modification of the title in the URL or not ?
Example : "Trump says he wants to ban search engines" would have URL http://www.companyname.com/news/entertainment/Trump-says-he-wants-to-ban-search-engines?id=12345678
Later in the day the title becomes "Trump denies he suggested banning search engines". Should the URL be modified to http://www.companyname.com/news/entertainment/Trump-denies-he-suggested-banning-search-engines?id=12345678 (option A) or not (option B) ?
In Google News it makes no difference because of the sitemap, but in Google organic things are different.
At present (option B in place), Google apparently doesn't see that the article has been updated, and shows the initial timestamp which is visually (and presumably SEOwise) not good : our new news looks like old news. Modifiying the URL would solve that issue, but could, may be, create another one : the new URL, being considered a new article, would lose, the acquired weight of the previous one in terms of referrals, social trafic and so on. Or not ? What do you think is the best option ?
Thanks for your expertise,
Yves
-
I try to balance the pros and cons of updating the URL, given that both point to the same article (in the http://www.companyname.com/news/entertainment/Trump-says-he-wants-to-ban-search-engines?id=12345678 URL, only the articleid is used by the db to fetch the article, all text content before the ?id= is irrelevant), so it's not the issue of losing trafic.
Pro of udating is having a fresher timestamp displayed in google organic. That's for sure.
Con is the fact that google could induce from the fresher timestamp that it's a "new" article and that all its accumulated weight (referrals, social mentions...) would be lost. That's not for sure, and that's why I'm looking for advice.
Best,
Yves
-
By "... loss of referencing," what precisely do you mean? From your question it appeared you were mostly worried about the timestamp issue in web or all search on Google?
Are you worried you change the article so much that given info would no longer be in it?From a news perspective, the timestamp is informative and, I believe, important. Is there the ability to add an update to that which would show near the timestamp? So the story is three blind mice arrested for jaywalking today. Then in two days breaking news: Mouse B freed due to technicality in arrest! Is there a way to have **"Update 2016.04.01" **show in bold at beginning of article so that timestamp seen by searcher is likely ignored?
Best
-
Thanks Robert. I probably need to be more precise on one point. Both option A and option B lead to the same page, because the ?id=articleid is the only part of the URL taken into account by the db server. So we are not going to get any 404's. What I worry about is the loss of referencing linked to the original URL wording, if I may say so.
-
Thanks Eric. I probably need to be more precise on one point. Both option A and option B lead to the same page, because the ?id=articleid is the only part of the URL taken into account by the db server. So we are not going to get any 404's. What I worry about is the loss of referencing linked to the original URL wording, if I may say so.
-
Eric, in your last line did you mean to say just update the story? It sounds as if you are saying don't change the URL, update it. Just trying to give Yves clarity.
Best
-
i would definitely not change the URLs. Once a page is crawled and indexed, you should leave it there--and update that page as necessary. Other sites may link to it (and you may then lose the links or they'll to 404 errors) if you change the URL. You may also have social media links out there to the article that are shared. If someone clicks on it from social media, then it would then go to an old story if you change the URL.
Generally it's better to NOT change the URL of the page unless it's a new story, requiring a new article. If it's the same story, then you should just update the current URL.
-
Yves,
Great question and I do think you already know the answer. IMO I would not update the URLs because you could end up chasing your tail. If you change the URL are you going to 301 every time you change it? If not, anyone who linked to the article or bookmarked pre change is lost.
Anecdotally, a year or more ago I started noticing on a major sports mag online that starts with S and ends in I they were changing titles regularly. Frankly, I don't have much time for reading sports so I need to get the info and go. As a fan of the Mavericks for instance, I would read an article that was Dirk Sets Record and think great cause I like the big German. Then a day later I would see an article that was Another Record! and when I clicked on it... was the one I had already read the day before. My guess now is that they change their titles like I change my socks. When I saw your question I did a quick test and they are not changing the URLs on the two I found.
I hope this helps you a bit.
Robert
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
-
Toxic URL???
Hi I have a URL that produced page 1, number 1 to 3 for most of our industries top phrases. Then we received a google penalty, (as did several of our competitors on the same day). We were effectively wiped from google. After much disavowing we were allowed back into the search results, this took about 3 months. I have employed the services of a top London SEO company for over a year now and have seen no significant improvement. I believe they are doing there best, however there results are VERY poor. According to the various tools, (searchmetrics, woorank, semrush) to name but a few, our site scores very well, yet we are not getting the results. Page one seems to be full of totally new websites, most of which I have never heard of, and have appeared from nowhere. Should I scrap our URL and put up a completely new one, and put a redirect from the original one? This would be a biggy since our url has been around for 20 years. Thanks for reading. Andy
On-Page Optimization | | First-VehicleLeasing0 -
Update old article or publish new content and redirect old post?
Hi all, I'm targetting a keyword and we used to rank quite good for it. Last couple of months traffic of that keyword (and variations) is going down a bit. I wrote an extensive new post on the same topic, much more in dept and from 600 to 1800 words covering the same topic. Is it better to update the old article and mention that it's updated recently, or publish a new post and redirect the old post to the new post?
On-Page Optimization | | jorisbrabants0 -
Numerous duplicate destination URLs from within one menu - potential impact for on-page SEO?
Hello all What is your evaluation in regards to a number of links (different anchors) targeting the same destination URL from within one and the same menu (on the same website)? Keeping it brief: Think of a top menu drop down entry, that needs to feature the alphabet (each letter has it's own sub-entries). However, the actual letter itself is not represented by a page (it has no URL either). So far so good. However, when testing the menu on a mobile device, the letter entries are still treated, as if they were non-existent pages - thus throwing a 404 when clicked. In order to avoid people getting a 404 when clicking on any letter, it would be ideal, if they were directed to any main page (the same destination URL though). However, that would mean 26 times the same destination URL from within that menu. Is this approach potentially bad for SEO, hence there would be numerous duplicate destination URLs in place? Please mind, I am not inquiring for help on how to arrange the actual menu. I am concerned about the impact, identical destination URLs could have on the on-page SEO. Many thanks in advance for your help and input!
On-Page Optimization | | Hermski0 -
URL Structure Suggestion
Hi
On-Page Optimization | | sandeep.clickdesk
My site url: http://goo.gl/AiOgu1
We are working on URL structure of our website. I have one query about URL structure.
Which one is good URL structure according to user and SEO prospective.
The targeted keyword for the particular page is "wordpress live chat". Is it worthful to rewrite the present url "https://www.abc.com/wordpress" to "https://www.abc.com/wordpress-live-chat" Please suggest.0 -
Does a URL forward slash break up an exact match phrase?
I've seen some organisations implementing keyword phrases per URL with forward slashes in-between the keywords. Would this still work for broad AND exact match keywords when the search engine references the URL? Here's an example with the keyword being "scuola di lingue tedesco". http://www.esl.ch/it/adulti/scuola-di-lingue/tedesco/index.htm Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | featherseo0 -
Canonical URL's - Fixed but still negatively impacted
I recently noticed that our canonical url's were not set up correctly. The incorrect setup predates me but it could have been in place for close to a year, maybe a bit more. Each of the url's had a "sortby" parameter on all of them. I had our platform provider make the fix and now everything is as it should be. I do see issues caused by this in Google Webmaster, for instance in the HTML suggestions it's telling me that pages have duplicate title tags when in fact this is the same page but with a variety of url parameters at the end of the url. To me this just highlights that there is a problem and we are being negatively impacted by the previous implementation. My question is has anyone been in this situation? Is there any way to flush this out or push Google to relook at this? Or is this a sit and be patient situation. I'm also slightly curious if Google will at some point look and see that the canonical urls were changed and then throw up a red flag even though they are finally the way they should be. Any feedback is appreciated. Thanks,
On-Page Optimization | | dgmiles
Dave0 -
Absolute vs Relative URLs
What are the pros and cons of these two types of URLs and what type of weight does this hold. It doesn't seem to be a big issue in regards to ranking. Any qualified clarity would help.
On-Page Optimization | | Romancing0 -
Redirecting to a keyword-rich domain URL
It's best practice to choose a domain that has keyword in it. But if someone has just launched a website and the domain name does not have keyword, is it better to purchase a new domain name that has a keyword in the name and redirect existing domain to the new domain? Will that help SEO? (This just launched website does not have any traffic or links yet.)
On-Page Optimization | | Amjath0