Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
Hopefully I will make sense of this question. I am not referring to link changes here, just changes or updates to content on pages.
I know the bots prefer a sense of stability but we like to keep our pages up-to-date with content, changes to pictures, reviews, etc.
So my curiosity is, if we are changing pictures fairly regularly on a page or say a review changes here and there, does the bot get upset with this? My first feeling was small changes as such wouldn't really impact things but now I wonder if by each and every change like this forces the bot to maybe recalculate the weight of the page and sends it into a limbo, that maybe all pages should stay as static as feasibly possible and only change pictures or reviews when absolutely needed.
When I hear about stability it makes me wonder if we should even have things like reviews on pages. (I use that one as the example probably because it changes the weight the most vs. a picture change.)
Am I over thinking here?
Thank you,
Kris
When I hear about stability it makes me wonder if we should even have things like reviews on pages.
User generated content is widespread today - just think about blog comments and forum threads). There's no inherent problem here.
That said, I would be wary about extremely frequent tweaking of the page's MAIN content. At some point, I feel it can trip a flag because it looks like an attempt at manipulating rankings. How often does any webmaster need to edit actual page content, after all?
Some sites, such as news sites for example, will naturally have high level (category level) pages that change all the time. But changes to their article pages would be a LOT less frequent. I also feel Google can differentiate this kind of situation from an attempt to maniuplate their rankins.
So I'd be hesitant to talk about any percentages or frequencies. If updating a page's content is useful for your visitors, then go for it. But as a general rule, you may be a lot better off spending your time developing new pages, new content, and new features.
As a general rule, I prefer
Typically, our content only changes once in a blue moon with the occasion of needing to update some information. Seasonal information to be exact. As far as the pictures went, if we go on trips, we like to swap out the old with the new. Or again, seasonal photos are nice during winter, summer, etc.
We never thought of it as a problem and its never seemed to change our rankings but reviews are fairly new for us. We recently introduced them and we suddenly thought about how static or seasonal we used to be compared to reviews changing more often.
So that being said, I think we are ok on the changes we do make sometimes. We are never changing regularly to manipulate anything. Our big change after 9 years of being in business was the introduction to some upper level pages which I mentioned in another post and we didn't like the results to that. So I think it's likely to be another 8 years before we make any more changes!
Thanks again.
Kris
