Priority Attribute in XML Sitemaps - Still Valid?

[Allie_Williams]

Is the priority value (scale of 0-1) used for each URL in an XML sitemap still a valid way of communicating to search engines which content you (the webmaster) believe is more important relative to other content on your site?

I recall hearing that this was no longer used, but can't find a source.

If it is no longer used, what are the easiest ways to communicate our preferences to search engines? Specifically, I'm looking to preference the most version version of a product's documentation (version 9) over the previous version (version 8).

Thanks!

[Allie_Williams]

Thanks Peter, I appreciate you tracking that down!

[Mobilio]

Here is it:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-priority-change-frequency-xml-sitemap-20273.html

Just as John Mueller suggest you should use lastmod attribute to indicate change http://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html and then you can do sitemap ping to Google for reindexing. This is easy http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ping?sitemap=URLOFSITEMAP.xml and it's allowed https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/183669?hl=en