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CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

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Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#11

Post by laweijfmvo »

crazygringo wrote: post #7

Is there any evidence this would even work? Surely Google determines "fresh, relevant" content according to whatever has recently been published, which this doesn't change. If anything, doesn't Google consider sites with a long history of content with tons of inbound links as more authoritative and therefore higher-ranked? This baffles me. It baffles me why this would be successful SEO -- and assuming that it actuall…

I have noticed some articles (and not just "Best XXX of 202Y" articles) that seem to always update their "Updated on" date which Google unhelpfully picks up and shows in search results leading me to think the page is much more recent than it is.

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#12

Post by ijustwanttovote »

skilled wrote: post #3

Funny timing, because Google said yesterday not to do this. https://www.seroundtable.com/google-dont-delete-older-helpfu...

> https://www.seroundtable.com/google-dont-delete-older-helpfu...

I think older articles will eventually hold more weight in Google Searches. There will be a before OpenAI vs after OpenAI weighting.

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#13

Post by laweijfmvo »

petee wrote: post #5

I've seen a couple news sources that are altering their publish dates to show near the top of news feeds. Google will announce "3 hours old", despite being weeks old.

Yup, "Last Updated on xxx" but no obvious updates called out in the article

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#14

Post by pavel_lishin »

loandbehold wrote: post #9

That's what I moved to ChatGPT4 for most of my info queries. Google is badly compromised by SEO. Plus ChatGPT4 gives answer right away within having to go through multiple results and search within each page for specific line I need.

Heck, sometimes that answer is even correct!

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#15

Post by burnhamup »

crazygringo wrote: post #7

Is there any evidence this would even work? Surely Google determines "fresh, relevant" content according to whatever has recently been published, which this doesn't change. If anything, doesn't Google consider sites with a long history of content with tons of inbound links as more authoritative and therefore higher-ranked? This baffles me. It baffles me why this would be successful SEO -- and assuming that it actuall…

The theory I've heard is related to 'crawl budget'. Google is only going to devote a finite amount of time to indexing your site. If the number of articles on your site exceeds that time, some portion of your site won't be indexed. So by 'pruning' undesirable pages, you might boost attention on the articles you want indexed. No clue how this ends up working in practice.

Google's suggestion isn't to delete pages, but maybe mark some pages with a no index header.

https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/...

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#16

Post by aliasxneo »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #11
crazygringo wrote: post #7

Is there any evidence this would even work? Surely Google determines "fresh, relevant" content according to whatever has recently been published, which this doesn't change. If anything, doesn't Google consider sites with a long history of content with tons of inbound links as more authoritative and therefore higher-ranked? This baffles me. It baffles me why this would be successful SEO -- and assuming that it actuall…

I have noticed some articles (and not just "Best XXX of 202Y" articles) that seem to always update their "Updated on" date which Google unhelpfully picks up and shows in search results leading me to think the page is much more recent than it is.

I've been curious about how they are doing this. It seems to be an increasing trend and is making the query mostly useless.

Re: CNET is deleting old articles to try to improve its Google Search ranking

#19

Post by JRKrause »

loandbehold wrote: post #9

That's what I moved to ChatGPT4 for most of my info queries. Google is badly compromised by SEO. Plus ChatGPT4 gives answer right away within having to go through multiple results and search within each page for specific line I need.

Right there with you. I've gotten so used to having it give me exactly the answer to my specific question that, when I must fall back to traditional search, it's noticeably unpleasant.
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