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

Post by progmetaldev » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 11:29 PM UTC

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #26

burnhamup wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Even if that rule were true, why wouldn’t everything in the say, top NNN internet sites get an exemption? It is the Internet’s most hit content, why would it not be exhaustively indexed? Alternatively, other than ads, what is changing on a CNN article from 10 years ago? Why would that still be getting daily scans?

Post by jpk » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 11:31 PM UTC

slater wrote: post #40

kenjackson wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness to them. If one of their top ways of getting traffic is being marked as less relevant because of older articles, what do you want them to do? Just continue to lose money because Google can't rank them appropriately?

Or mayhap Google et al could realize and understand that having old articles in archive shouldn't penalize your ranking.

Post by throw0101a » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 11:32 PM UTC

burnhamup wrote: post #15

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…

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 11:33 PM UTC

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.

Post by throw0101a » Wed, Aug 09, 2023, 11:35 PM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #82

crazygringo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But as that linked guide explains, that's only relevant for sites with e.g. over a million pages changing once a week . That's for stuff like large e-commerce sites with constantly changing product info. Google is clear that if your content doesn't change often (in the way that news articles don't), then crawl budget is irrelevant.

To determine whether content changes Google has to spend budget as well, hasn't it? So it has to fetch that 20-years old article.