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
-
Google Index Issue - Indexing pages that don't exhist
Hi All, I have noticed a weird issue when performing a search on Google to show me all the pages it is indexing of our site. site:www.one2create.co.uk It brings up most of our website pages but then is also brings up a few HTTPS urls (our site has not been converted to HTTPS yet) but also the URL path, Title, and Meta Description are from one of our clients websites (an Automotive Job site). When clicked they take you to a generic 404 server error page, not our branded 404 page. The site that it has taken the url, title and meta description from is on a different server completely so I don't see how it has even managed to get that information and linked it to our site? Has anyone seen anything like this before? And what is the best way to fix it? We have asked Google to re-index the site but still no luck.
Search Behavior | | Jvickery0 -
Google keyword planner shows low search volumes
Hello, There are some terms that you'd expect to see a lot of results. In fact, in the old days of Keyword Tool, I recall seeing thousands of results for a keyword like "anderson cooper". Today, I see a small amount as a monthly average. Am I doing something wrong? All I really want to do is find search volumes on particular keywords either globally or local to a country. And it's proving soo hard! 😞 Screen_Shot_2013_11_26_at_11_13_20_PM.png
Search Behavior | | mhamilton0 -
Are there better & inexpensive third party website analytics software over Google Analytics?
I've heard there are some third-party software that provide greater depth of information than Google Analytics, such as mouse tracking, heat mapping, video snapshots ect. Can anyone recommend a good program to use? I've tried a basic web-search but there seems to be a great variety of different ones.
Search Behavior | | Justin_hannan270 -
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 -
Is a Shorter Page Title Better?
Is there any evidence that SEs give a greater weighting to keyword phrases in the page title if there are less characters? For example: 1. "Buy Silver Bullion" 2. "Buy Silver Bullion Coins Bars Rounds Easily Privately Securely" The key phrase I am trying to optimize for is "Buy Silver Bullion." To my knowledge, current practices would say the 2nd phrase is better optimized since it contains more keywords and it has a few USPs. But is there any evidence that the 1st example would be higher ranked in google for the phrase "Buy Silver Bullion" because it is more focused than the 2nd?
Search Behavior | | nwright0 -
Long page - good or bad?
Our attorney wrote a dozen articles that range from 300 to 700 words on various topics of the certain law area. These articles are all placed on our FAQ page with anchored table of contents. This page does frequently come up on the first page of the google when people search for the questions discussed in these articles. 90% of these visits are not local therefore they are not potential clients. Attorney views it more like a community service then a marketing tool. However, I think there might be a problem. People read though the page and close it because usually they can find what they were looking for right there, however GA counts it as bounce because they did not browse to another page. Would large number of bounces hurt our standing with Google? Would it be better to separate the page into multiple pages for each article to make visitors browse?
Search Behavior | | SirMax0 -
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 -
How to optimize a Stock Symbol page?
Hi, My website is for stock picking. The keywords in each stock page are stock symbol. Now the stock symbol rank of my website in google is around 30-50. I use On-Page Keyword Optimization tool on seomoz to optimize those page. Now all stock symbol pages are Grade A in on-page report card. Is there other suggestions to increase stock symbol page ranking? Thanks in advance! -Don
Search Behavior | | dodoflying0