MikeNoLastName - 10:01 am on Nov 17, 2012 (gmt 0)

> would be funny if Google has now decided that web pages should be static, never changing so they can keep track. What a useful Internet they are engineering. <
>I do think that constant fiddling with a page can make Google think you're trying to manipulate results. <

Not so funny. Unfortunately I have started suspecting the exact same thing just this week. If Google is really thinking in this manner they need their brains sucked out and examined under a microscope... I volunteer to do the honors! Every newspaper and news magazine website homepage out there would be at the bottom of ALL the SERPs (and come to think of it... many are, hmm..) . What about stock, sports or weather reporting sites?

Perhaps not bad from a search engine point of view where they like to keep track of all their very static (and very likely outdated) reference info in little compartmentalized boxes, but from a dynamic news business point of view, you want people to come to your WELL-KNOWN and bookmarked home page and be able to instantly see the latest feature articles and click to as many of them as possible.

What business is it of G*'s that you are a daily, weekly or monthly periodical and your primary pages (where everyone has bookmarked and knows to go) change frequently.

Based on some recent experiments, and real experiences, I'm strongly beginning to believe that if someone copies your page, and then you make small updates to it (something in the real world changed the reported information) you can now become the copier because you now have substantially the same content that they copied from you, only dated newer (ALBEIT MORE ACCURATE) than them, and wind up getting penalized as a duplicate of your own content.

I think G* is trying to guess and generalize WAY too much and is missing the target far more than they are hitting it.
But then, they have admitted they are trying to become more of a REFERENCE ENGINE of the past than a search engine of reality.