Last Updated on December 12, 2022 by arun
New Year is coming and almost all publishers now want their year-based posts to rank for the year 2023 instead of 2022 in the year 2023 but what google thinks when you just change the date not the actual content or update the content.
What Google says on Relabeling old content e.g( best fans 2022 to best fans 2023 )
This issue returns regularly, and SEOs that follow a set methodology typically merely update the previous year’s editions to the new year with few changes. However, Google has repeatedly cautioned against passing off previously published material as fresh, stating that the publication date should only be changed in cases where there has been a material alteration to the original piece. Google has even remarked that there is typically no need to update evergreen material.
Question and Answers on Twitter
Question: On November 26 2022, Amit Saha from Mumbai India ask “Hi,@JohnMu 4/5 weeks to go to enter in 2023. So, if we start updating years on content titles and all in December how will Google act to sudden change in year which is not came yet? 😅”
Answer: John Mueller replied “Is there significantly new content? Then update the dates. Is there no significantly new content? Then don’t update the dates. We see a lot of spam & low-quality content that just arbitrarily updates dates (“Best fax machine for 2023″), it’s pretty obvious & embarrassing.”
Question: thunder jack ask “How bout evergreen content that could be considered “new” through decades? Adding a few latest pointers along with date change should work!”
Answer : John Mueller replied “There’s nothing wrong with updating content, and when you make significant changes, updating the date (or using an update-date). Serious sites do that. Just tweaking, and saying “oh, still valid in 2023″ is not a significant update.”
Check the full concersation at https://twitter.com/JohnMu/status/1597495388243890176
Because this is a never-ending conversation this topic was also discussed in the past
In Feb 2022 Khushal Bherwani ask “Is this good practice change date of existing blog, and by these blog also rank and earn good traffic.? So this can be negative impact? Should I have to do this?”
John Mueller replied “When you write something new, or siginificantly change something existing, then change the date. Changing the date without doing anything else is just noise & useless.”
What i think is that there in no penality on this till date and google just ignores them or give weightage to new fresh content published recently.
Also check 200 ranking signals Google says figure is misleading
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