Googles "freshness" update

1. 89

   Pcunixposted 12 years ago

   The arguments against dating pages are obvious enough - you don't want readers "turned off" by old pages.
   
   But now Google has added a new twist (see http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2011/11 … sults.html for a discussion).
   
   I have very mixed feelings about this.  I think I may add it to new pages but then take it off as they age..  but if Google is going to  be expecting dates, maybe its better to leave them.
   
   Aaargh.

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2. 81

   Mark Ewbieposted 12 years ago

   I might just put "dated 2050-12-31" on all mine.
   
   Should keep them at the top for a while.
   
   Stand by for endless adverts "Refresh your pages with SEO redating system".

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   1. 89

      Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah, I know.  Yet another way to game the system, although that's one Google could spot easily enough - they'd just need to track the first date they saw.
      
      But that raises the question of why they would need dates at all?  They know when they first saw a page - why require an explicit date?

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         Mighty Momposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I thought I got rid of all that date nonsense when I got married in 2004!

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3. 84

   CMHypnoposted 12 years ago

   More hoops to jump through!

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   1. 89

      Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Maybe.  It really does not make sense that Google would trust a date we supply - they don't trust anything else we provide!
      
      And dates are so easy to verify (for freshness anyway).  This advice does not make sense.

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      1. 84

         CMHypnoposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         Although I have tried to learn as much SEO as I can and realise it is important when writing for the web, Google seem to be moving their goalposts so often that it almost impossible for the relatively uninitiated non-techies like me to keep up with. Where will it end?

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         1. 89

            Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Well, in my opinion (an opinion heartily disdained by many) the only SEO that matters is good content, proper markup and regular repetition.
            
            Everything else is subject to Google's whim.

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4. 89

   Pcunixposted 12 years ago

   Also, Google's blog post doesn't say we need dates.
   
   http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/ … earch.html
   
   I wonder if some SEO folks are talking through their hats?

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   1. 81

      Mark Ewbieposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Makes a change from talking through the, er, other end.

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   2. 60

      gabgirl12posted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Ok, after reading that blog, I think the last paragraph is key. Depending on what you are searching for the algorithmic improvement will calculate what you need in terms of 'freshness.
      
      I have to agree that they are talking out of their hats. It's always best to go to the source for clarification. Oh goodness I was half ready to start putting dates on all my hubs. Thanks for this update.

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5. 67

   Silver Roseposted 12 years ago

   It's not going to be based on dates. Danny Sullivan tweeted the following:
   
   Update: Google says when page is first crawled is one of signals to determine freshness
   
   Date first crawled is related to date the page was published. (and if you think about it, they arn't going to do an update that can be gamed as easily as putting in  a date on the page).

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   1. 89

      Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Yeah, that makes a LOT more sense.

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   2. 72

      thisisoliposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      Yes this is correct, it's all about date first indexed.  Updates to a page no longer count as 'freshness'.

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      1. 89

         Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         I wonder if new comments are now the same as any update..  to me, comments should be more important.

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   3. 55

      Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      nope the date they care about is the creation date- on page dating doesn't affect anything, but updating it will not be about the date but the fresh content on the page. A single new comment on your page gives you a boost as it's counted as content and the page being updated- this is why getting a lot of comment conversations going (often simply by replying to those who do comment with something that makes them ask another question (thought provoking comment from your side that both answers the question and starts another) will push your site up. This happened on one of my sites the comment conversations alone brought in more juice and today the page has more than a million page views and backlinks like crazy- and is number 1 in google (for 2 years now straight)- no promo or anything on my part.

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6. 57

   uthurbanposted 12 years ago

   Write a hub, go to the Webmaster Tools, submit the new link.............. Your hub will be indexed within 6 hours - without any exception......
   
   That is the best way to fight this latest issue of fresh pages, and the old one of content being copied even before indexed by Google............
   
   Freshness of content doesn't matter for product reviews, and informational hubs, if it has a long tail title.....

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   1. 94

      wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I'm still new to WMT, and haven't seen anywhere to submit that link.  Where does it go?

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      1. 57

         uthurbanposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         1. On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
         
         2. On the Dashboard, under Diagnostics, click Fetch as Googlebot.
         
         3. In the text box, type the path to the page you want to check.
         
         4. In the dropdown list, select the type of fetch you want. To see what our web crawler Googlebot sees, select Web. To see what our mobile crawler Googlebot-Mobile sees, select cHTML (this is used mainly for Japanese web sites) or Mobile XHTML/WML.
         
         Click Fetch.
         
         You can use this tool to fetch up to 50 URLs a week.
         
         [Source: http://www.google.com/support/webmaster … er=158587]
         
         It really works and in most cases indexed article within first hour of successful submission.

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         1. 94

            wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            Thanks!  I often see several days before having a new hub indexed, and once went 6 weeks.  This should help a lot.
            
            I'm still learning about WMT - I keep finding new information that looks intriguing or useful, and then get sidetracked trying to understand it or use it instead of learning all the nooks and crannies of WMT.
            
            I had actually seen this before, but didn't know what it meant and didn't want to mess up a good thing by calling for bots when I had no idea what it was all about.

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               theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               I love fetch as Googlebot! I use it often!

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            2. 89

               Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               All you need to do is create a Google sitemap and reference that in GWT.   That's easily automated - silly to log in and submit links.
               
               Google even provides a Python script to do that and I have a Perl version that does the same thing.

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               1. 57

                  uthurbanposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  What about non-techies?
                  
                  Submitting pages through Google URL Submission Tool may be silly - where you can submit any page - but, submitting that through WMT is definitely effective. The longest time that I saw a page being indexed is about 6 hours. That works really fast. Then, you can also see the page through the eye of Google crawl.
                  
                  Unlike open submission, you can only submit your own page through WMT.

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                  1. 89

                     Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                     A site map IS through GWMT and the indexing happens just as quickly..

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                  2. 80

                     Greekgeekposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                     I don't submit Hubs anywhere or promote them in any way save for a Tweet, and that only for some of them. My Hubs are indexed within 20 minutes.
                     
                     Googlebot crawls user-generated content sites and blogs relentlessly. (That's one reason I use them, despite having built my own websites since 1993.) Depending on the site, Googlebot can quickly learn to identify author accounts with reliably relevant and useful content, and it will make a point of keeping an eye on them.
                     
                     I've actually had trouble with SEO experiments -- trying to determine whether Google was monitoring Twitter and indexing new content based on Tweets -- because Googlebot was coming by Squidoo so fast that by the time I finished typing the Tweet and hit return, it had already indexed the page I had just posted.

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                     1. 94

                        wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                        You make me sick!   I can't remember the last time I had anything indexed in less than 2 days, and it's usually considerably longer.

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                     2. 57

                        uthurbanposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                        Google no longer use Twitter for real time search results. Their collaboration is over, and I don't think that they are allowing their 'caffeine' to look into tweets. They will do that for Google Plus.
                        
                        Google do index pages on its own. However, when it is encouraging webmasters to use 'Fetch as Googlebot' for submitting 50 pages in a week to be indexed then that should not be any problem. And, getting indexed quickly matters a lot. Google don't see date on your page, but it sees the date it has crawled that page - and, later indexed that page.

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            3. 57

               uthurbanposted 12 years agoin reply to this

               WMT is a powerful and a repository of great genuine information about our account, like backlinks, Crawl errors, crawl stats.
               
               Hubbers are able to use that because of the subdomain switch.
               
               One of the best features is to ask Google to check whether your account has been manually penalized or not, I did for my main account here and got a reply.

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               1. 94

                  wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

                  I'm finding a real use for the section that tells me what search terms are being used for my hubs, how many click throughs I'm getting, and where I'm ranking for it.
                  
                  If I rank OK but don't get clicks, why not?  Do I need to tweak the summary to hook the searcher in?  A little different title maybe?  If I'm not ranking but there are a lot of searches should I aim for them and change keywords?
                  
                  Of if my ranking is falling, why?  Does the title need tweaked, or a little optimization to the text?
                  
                  I've spent a few days going through some of this and am already seeing some results; wish I'd found it months ago!

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   2. 55

      Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I haven't heard of this webmasters tools on google, what's the home page for "fetching" links? (entry page) thanks!

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      1. 94

         wildernessposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home?hl=en

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         1. 55

            Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            THANKS!

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      2. 65

         theherbivorehippiposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         http://www.google.com/support/webmaster … wer=158587
         
         http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot. … ch-as.html
         
         

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         1. 55

            Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            You rock thanks! (you too wilderness

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      3. 57

         uthurbanposted 12 years agoin reply to this

         First of all you need to verify your account.
         
         http://hubpages.com/learningcenter/How- … ster-Tools

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         1. 55

            Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            THANKYA!

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         2. 55

            Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this

            done- that was incredibly easy! wow I was off hubpages for a while (but still earning a nice chunk of change- love it!) so I didn't even know about this- brilliant program... thank you all for bringing it up!

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7. 60

   paradigmsearchposted 12 years ago

   In the past, I have occasionally updated my hubs. I now intend to do it more frequently.

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   1. 55

      Jerrico Usherposted 12 years agoin reply to this

      I spend that same time creating new ones, updating should be something built into the page like comments, rss feeds, polls, etc... there are many. Updating doesn't have to be a major update to be valuable- just enough that it's updating DAILY if possible. By spending more time writing a hub so it gets more comments you can do a great deal- in fact part of the updating process that YOU can do that is important is not just approving comments but in actually replying to them with a thought provoking reply as well as thank you. I notice hubs with interactive authors get MANY more comments coming in- comment conversations can boost your page to 1 million page views by virtue of it's freshness/rank, backlinks those people create sending people to see what THEY or YOU said and so on. I have such a hub- currently with 1,064,400 (give or take a hundred) page views, 763 comments, and I make a nice chunk of change on it and all I do is respond to comments- never promoted, backlinked, or anything.
      
      I did, just update the site, created 15 more hubs in a series based on it and funneled that traffic to them and now THEY are starting to earn... but that's evolution! Don't just sit on a popular hub- turn it into a corporation o f earning ATM machines

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8. 63

   Richieb799posted 12 years ago

   Getting on Google News looks impossible since the majority of the articles there seem to be from official newspaper sites

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9. 86

   rebekahELLEposted 12 years ago

   It seems to be more relevant to news type articles, maybe in competition to Twitter's ability to dispense breaking news so quickly to so many.
   
   http://searchengineland.com/google-sear … ches-99856
   
   I read Danny Sullivan's article a few days ago and wondered exactly what the point is, it doesn't necessarily mean 35% improvement to search results.

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10. 92

    habeeposted 12 years ago

    PQ, thanks for the info. I hardly recognized you without your colorful hair! lol

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11. 96

    PaulGoodman67posted 12 years ago

    I'm sorry Pcunix but I have tried and I cannot get used to your new profile picture.  Can you go back to being a clown please?  ;-)

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    1. 57

       uthurbanposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       I second your request.

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    2. 89

       Pcunixposted 12 years agoin reply to this

       It will grow on you :-)

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