The Google Freshness Factor - What's Google Up To Here?

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So how does Google determine the freshness of a document in the first place? Let’s look at it, shall we? We’ve already pointed out the capability of fudging the “last-modified-since” attribute, so that means that it cannot be used to accurately gauge the freshness of a document on its own merit.

Document freshness can be defined as a combination of elements, such as:

• The frequency of all web page changes (last-modified-since)

• The actual amount of the change to a page itself; whether it is a structural change, or simple, but irrelevant, changes

• Changes in keyword distribution or density

• The actual number of new inbound links

• The change or update of anchor text

• The number of other pages in the database that relate to the same keywords

• The amount of duplicate content out there

• The numbers of new links to low trust web sites (for example, a domain may be considered low trust for having too many outbound links on one web page, or linking to link farms or free for all pages)

There could also be many other factors involved, and it’s not always beneficial or advisable to change the content of your web pages regularly, but it is very important to keep your pages fresh regularly and that may not necessarily mean a content change. In fact, if you change your content too drastically or too many pages at once, you could be subject to the sandbox phenomenon that affect new sites in the index.

Next: What Happens When Documents Are Too New >>
 

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