Google: Don't Delete Older Content, It May Be Helpful Content
Danny Sullivan, Google's Search Liaison, posted a PSA on Twitter that you should not delete old content from your site because you think Google Search doesn't like old content. He said it is not true, Google Search can find older content to be helpful. So don't delete helpful old content.
Danny Sullivan wrote, "Are you deleting content from your site because you somehow believe Google doesn't like "old" content? That's not a thing! Our guidance doesn't encourage this. Older content can still be helpful, too."
He then posted a link to the official helpful content documentation on Google Search.
This should not surprise anyone, Google has been saying this for years. Here are some older stories I wrote about this topic:
- Google Advice On Old Content On News Sites: Remove, Noindex Or Leave It
- Google: Don't Remove Old News From Your News Site For SEO Reasons
- Google: Don't Just Blindly Delete Old Pages
- Googlers Disagrees About Removing vs Improving Content For Google Ranking Benefit
- Google: Old Content On New Domains Is Okay
- Google: Panda Victims Don't Necessarily Need To Delete Old Blog Posts
- Google: We Don't Recommend You Remove Content To Fix Panda Issues
- Google: Pruning Content Never Should Have Worked For Panda
- Google Retake: Improving Content & Pruning Content Are Both Valid Strategies
Here is that tweet:
Are you deleting content from your site because you somehow believe Google doesn't like "old" content? That's not a thing! Our guidance doesn't encourage this. Older content can still be helpful, too. Learn more about creating helpful content: https://t.co/NaRQqb1SQx
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 8, 2023
Here is the follow up:
What if it's old, has broken links, is no longer relevant, and can't be made more helpful — don't worry about it?
— Steve Chipman (@SteveChipman) August 9, 2023
What if I delete the content that is now old and outdated?Cc: @JohnMu— Gaurav Jain 🇮🇳 (@GauravJaini) August 9, 2023
Delete what you don't want to keep - regular maintenance and cleaning up is always good. Just don't assume that deleting something only because it's old will improve your site's SEO magically.
— I am John (@JohnMu) August 9, 2023
If you are wondering why Danny Sullivan tweeted this in the first place, read CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles to Game Google Search at Gizmodo.
Google tweeted about deleting old articles after we asked them about CNET. Who said big companies can't be cute https://t.co/f4oNpxQYXV
— Thomas Germain (@thomasgermain) August 9, 2023
“If you’ve got content that’s fallen off in traffic and ratings and search engines have deemed is not valuable for users, that’s content you need to look at.”That has nothing to do with "it's old so it should be deleted" which seems to be latest "one weird SEO trick" that…— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 9, 2023
This wasn't a quote in the article but from the memo the idea that "content pruning" somehow "sends a signal to Google that says ... is fresh, relevant and worthy of being placed higher than our competitors in search results" isn't something we have said (in case people read that…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 9, 2023
John Mueller also posted a number of responses on this on Mastodon - click to those threads to see the context but here is a screenshot:
And more from Danny Sullivan on this topic on August 14th on Twitter:
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