Google likes it fresh… usually

You’ve probably heard that search engines like it if you have a blog on your site that you update fairly often (once a week is the common wisdom). But the same goes for ALL content on your site – in general, the more it changes, and the more of it that changes, the more brownie points get stirred into the particular mathematical stew (algorithm) being cooked up by the particular engine (think: Google) that’s nosing through your site. Which doesn’t mean that The Machines aren’t also good at recognizing and valuing old content that’s good – they do that, too, by looking at it from a different angle.

"A webpage is given a 'freshness' score based on its inception date, which decays over time. This freshness score can boost a piece of content for certain search queries, but degrades as the content becomes older."  - Cyrus Shepard, Moz Blog

“A webpage is given a ‘freshness’ score based on its inception date, which decays over time. This freshness score can boost a piece of content for certain search queries, but degrades as the content becomes older.”
– Cyrus Shepard, Moz Blog

“The goal of a search engine is to return the most relevant results to users,” concludes Cyrus Shepard matter-of-factly (and obviously) in an excellent Moz Blog post on content “freshness factors. “For your part, this requires an honest assessment of your own content. What part of your site would benefit most from freshness?  Old content that exists simply to generate pageviews, but accomplishes little else, does more harm than good for the web. On the other hand, great content that continually answers a user’s query may remain fresh forever. Be fresh. Be relevant. Most important, be useful.”