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:
The page itself isn’t likely to rank well. Removing it might mean if you have a massive site that we’re better able to crawl other content on the site. But it doesn’t mean we go “oh, now the whole site is so much better” because of what happens with an individual page.
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) 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.
— John Mueller (official) · #MaybeABot (@JohnMu) August 9, 2023
Similarly, keep in mind that just because something doesn't get a lot of views (eg, old news, obscure information) doesn't mean it's not helpful for those who do view it. Focus on the unique value, not on the age, view-count, etc.
— John Mueller (official) · #MaybeABot (@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.
Wasn't the first time I've been asked about this recently, so it felt useful to do some mythbusting. Definitely appreciate the article and hope it spreads the word this isn't something we're somehow telling people to do. Also to some of the quotes in the piece....
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 9, 2023
“Just because Google says that deleting content in isolation doesn’t provide any SEO benefit, this isn’t always true"
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 9, 2023
Which ... isn't what we said. We said that if people are deleting content just because they think *old content is somehow bad* that's -- again -- not a thing.
Back to the story, this statement: "Many companies live or die by their performance on Google Search, but Google is tight-lipped about the workings of its algorithms." We have many, many pages designed to help creators. A good starting place is our Search Essentials…
— 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:
Forum discussion at Twitter.
