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.
-
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
-
Vanish from google after choosing preferred domain and fixing 40 duplicate meta descriptions?
I recently followed 2 Google webmaster suggestions to clean up the on page SEO for our site. I chose a preferred domain 2 weeks ago(to www.website.com) and fixed the duplicate meta descriptions that our CMS was setting to unique and more natural descriptions for each page. I did that 3 days ago. Webmaster tools still says they are duplicates because it hasn't crawled the whole site yet. We have been fortunate enough to have some of our blog posts be covered by yahoo.com, cnet.com, huffingtonpost.com, gizmodo.com, etc. That is some major backlink juice and, as recently as 2 weeks ago, our website would be the #1 result when searching Google for "ourwebsite.com exact title of very popular blog post". Now it is on the 3rd page, and the top results are the websites that linked to our blog post. So....what gives? Is there a specific area I should look at? Our should I wait for Google to fully index our whole site now that changes have been made? It should be noted that our rankings have stayed the same in yahoo and bing. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
Search Behavior | | garyislearning0 -
Google site: search showing twice amount of indexed pages. why?
I have around 50k pages indexed on my site but when I do a google site: of my site it shows around 100k pages indexed. Why is it showing so much more? It is also only showing around 700 pages indexed in my web masters account for the site. Background: We have a custom site map being generated automatically. Let me know if you would like more info, Thanks.
Search Behavior | | Nicktaylor10 -
Google indexing PDF's
Hello, We work heavily on E-commerce SEO and recently Google has started to index PDF pages (Datasheets) added to the product pages instead of the actual product pages. Has anyone else noticed this at all? Seems to have got worse over the last month or so. Thanks
Search Behavior | | voipme0 -
Only 11 pages being crawled
Hi, Can some one have a look and see why out of 400+ pages we only have 11 being crawled on here?? http://www.lifetimelegal.co.uk Kind Regards Elissa
Search Behavior | | Chris__Chris0 -
Does Google recognise locality
We have been undertaking some website work recently and have identified that within our own geographical location of Hull, the www.styletech.co.uk website is first on page one. However, when moving approximately 30 miles away we are on Googles fourth page. We are in an independent network area e.g. Kingston Communications rather than BT, would this have an impact on how Google responds?
Search Behavior | | StyleTech0 -
Does Page Load Time Affect SEO Rankings?
I was curious about how much page load times affect rankings. Here's what I did: I put together a lot of interactive media on specific landing pages Time-on-Page from organic visitors went from 50 seconds to average of 34 minutes Bounce Rate decreased by 20% Page Load time increased from 1 second to 6 seconds and at peak times to 8 seconds (on 56KB test) In the meantime the page was re-indexed and re-cached My question is three-fold: Would the time on page give higher rankings for keyword Would decreased bounce rate enhance rankings? Would the page load time decrease rankings? Did anyone do a similar test? What were the results?
Search Behavior | | HMCOE0 -
Massive Google Drop on two sites!
Hi All, We have experienced a massive Google drop on Two of our eCommerce websites in the past week. From Feb - July we were ranked 2 for various key words In Aug we dropped to 8 In September to 96 if not lower. We pay for monthly link building and add unique product info each week (but not much new content such as articles or blogs). My SEO guys has not been that helpful and just sent me a link to the Panda update blog, which doesn't mean a great deal to me. Obviously this has had a massive effect on business, and ideally i need to diagnose the problem and find a new startegy on moving forward, so most likely looking for a for a new SEO guy/company as well. I need someone is proactive, communicates well and make constant suggestions about moving forward not just link building. One thing I would like to add is these two site have a different homepage, category and range structure, but do share some if the 2000 product database. Can anyone help? Any advice on sorting this would be gratefully appreciated. Thanks M
Search Behavior | | etsgroup0 -
New EU Laws governing cookies; will Google Analytics still be usable after May 25th?
Hi, first time I've posted a question, New EU Laws governing cookies; will Google Analytics still be usable after May 25th? - apologies in advance if its already been covered, but I couldn't find any answers when I searched - google search showed someone else ask the question already, but no straight answers were given:- From May 25th the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive will come in to force which prohibits the use of cookies without informed, prior consent from web users. I've been trying to research to see whether or not this will affect Google Analytics.The Directive seems to be designed to prevent behavioural tracking, rather than web stats, but after reading the directive (with no law experience) I'm fairly confused by what will be prohibited. If anyone has any thoughts on the matter, I'd be very grateful! 🙂
Search Behavior | | bendyman1