Freshening my content losing me rankings?

[internetheaven]

We have a bunch of help articles on our site that rank quite well ... until a few days after we add some updates.

The pages are about an industry that needs an update from time to time - this could be every week, every month or very few months depending on the article's topic.

The drops in traffic to our site from Google for each article corresponds to inserting fresh content on the page.

In my head, it makes sense that changing the content makes Googlebot wary for a little while ... but then my brain says "with all this fresh content/twitter stuff Google keeps harping on about, why are my pages being penalised for not being static and the same?"

The ranking eventually return after a few weeks but by then sometimes another update needs to be made.

[edited by: tedster at 5:49 pm (utc) on Oct. 31, 2009]

[edited by: internetheaven at 6:07 pm (utc) on Oct. 31, 2009]

[santapaws]

yes i have seen this too.

[santapaws]

my own theory is two fold, the rate of change of pages within that sector and your own trust ranking. If its a sector with a lot of affiliate sites i find they dont typically update their content, they just move on to a new site. This can skew the natural update factors google MAY be using to caluclate whats natural and whats manipulation. If you dont have much trust changes are more likely to flick a manipulation switch than a fresh content switch.

[BillyS]

My experience is just the opposite. We're going to refresh the articles in a couple of weeks for that very reason.

[TheMadScientist]

19. The method of claim 1, wherein the plurality of types of history data includes the query analysis data; and wherein the generating a score includes: determining whether the document is stale, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on whether the document is stale.

20. The method of claim 19, wherein the scoring the document includes: determining whether stale documents are considered favorable for a search query when the document is determined to be stale, and scoring the document based, at least in part, on whether stale documents are considered favorable for the search query when the document is determined to be stale.

21. The method of claim 20, wherein the determining whether stale documents are considered favorable for the search query is based, at least in part, on how often stale documents were selected over recent documents over time for the search query.

2008 Historical Data Patent [patft.uspto.gov]

Emphasis Mine.

Stale or Fresh being better (ranked higher) is query specific.

[internetheaven]

Stale or Fresh being better (ranked higher) is query specific.

I would imagine that my industry is one that thrives on fresh content. However, my industry most certainly fits in to this category:

If its a sector with a lot of affiliate sites i find they dont typically update their content, they just move on to a new site.

It's about 50/50 between "real" companies and affiliate sites in the SERPS for my industry. The "real" companies update their content every few weeks at least because it's a fast moving industry. The affiliate pages stay the same.

I'm in-between the two (can't really explain that better because of TOS) so have to act like a "real" company.

Must be a trust rank thing.

[Timetraveler]

I get lower rankings on a page as well, but I've always made updates to it a few times a day. When I do a major update (once a month) my rankings tend to be crap for a bit, then they come back and the cycle continues. As long as my customers are happy I'll continue...