Has there been a time where Google has said they no longer use a specific ranking signal? I mean, they said this like 20 years ago with maybe the meta keywords tag? Google said this with rel next/prev, Google News stock tickers and genre and meta keywords, authorship, stop using MapReduce and some other things. But generally, it is rare to see Google say we no longer use X as a ranking signal.
A lot of the items I mentioned above were not specific to Google Web Search, many were Google News. Also, many were not specifically around ranking but rather around indexing and crawling/storing. But Google has told us from time to time that a signal here and there is no longer being used.
As you know, Google launched a few speed ranking factors over the years. You would assume some are no longer working or in use, and some may no longer be used after the Page Experience Update launches. But will Google tell us that?
John Mueller of Google said unlikely:
I don't think we officially announced the deprecation of the old "speed as a ranking factor" part (which is super-ancient by now), but I see the PX metrics replacing that. I don't think we have other direct speed metrics for search ranking announced (at least I don't recall :-))
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 24, 2021
It is not like Google to tell us when they stop using ranking signals John said:
Looking back, I think we just don't tend to announce when we drop signals / factors that are no longer deemed necessary. Apart from no longer using Flash, which was a big deal for a number of years, they're just not that ... flashy.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 24, 2021
Although, it might be useful for us to know, don't you think?
Maybe we could do that when we stop using the keywords meta tag...
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) February 24, 2021
I'd love to see when Google stopped using specific ranking signals in search.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
