Page age

Is it a factor with any engines

[mark_roach]

The index page of my site has not been changed for over a year. I am loathed to change it since it does reasonably well for its search terms.

Does anyone have a view on whether the age of a page has any bearing on the SERPs

[agerhart]

It definitely plays a role with Alta Vista.......the others I am not so sure

[IanTurner]

Is it page age or site age with Alta, my impression was it was the sites age.

[bufferzone]

agerhart and IanTurner

is old good or bad in your expert oppinion ???

[agerhart]

I have seen results that woudl dispell the theory that old pages or sites get better results in AV......but I believe that most people think that older sites get better ranking

[Marcia]

Aging was a major factor with AV. It was no cause for alarm if a site made its entry in the 50's. Adding and submitting an additional page or two over a couple of months (good internal linking, BTW) saw increases to very acceptable rankings - in the 20's, then on up. No idea what the story is now, I pay no attention to AV. I haven't had new sites I submitted added in ages.

I have notice, to a practically imperceptible degree, that there is an aging factor operating with Google. No changes on the site, no changes in number of links, I've watched a couple of small sites move up a notch or two gradually, even above huge sites with multiple more links and higher page rank.

Just this month, for example, the Page Rank on my site dropped from 5 to 4, yet it moved up to #1 or top 5 on a couple of very obscure phrases. No changes have been made except for having a few less inbound links, which I don't think really affected the PR too much, since a couple of other small sites also dropped from 5 to 4 with no changes, except for 1 that had new pages indexed.

I could be wrong, but it seems I've observed a minor aging factor operating with Google. I don't watch the others as closely, so I can't say, except that I did notice a jump on a site or two when Excite updated last time, again with no changes made.

[agerhart]

A site that I submitted (paid) two months ago is doing pretty well in AV.

(edited by: agerhart at 8:01 pm (gmt) on Oct. 11, 2001

[mark_roach]

One of the places that I do quite well at and, contrary to most, still get decent traffic from is Altavista. My index page has also risen significantly at Google this month, though there are so many other factors at work over there, that I doubt it is due to age.

Has anyone seen evidence of fresh pages doing well with any of the engines ?

[IanTurner]

I think that older sites seem to benefit in AV. But then again traffic isn't very good as Marcia says

[Macguru]

I believe Fast like fresh submit. If one of my page ranks well on AV, or any other SE, I would not touch it.

Click banks can be some confusing factor when compared to page age. The more your page gets clicks, the older/better it can get. (I would be carefull clicking on it like mad from the same IP.)

[Ove]

Yes i have a new site listed in spray.se and lycos.se its the same lycos own spray today i have very high position there for big kw

They are in swedish

i could tell more about this next update for google

Ove

[rcjordan]

As for the age question, I have a hard time resolving that because other variables, primarily incoming links and directory listings, kick in the longer the site is out there.

>I am loathed to change it since it does reasonably well for its search terms.
>
If your concern is primarily one of just freshening the page for your users, you could do a lot of that with external javascript document.write and keep the changes away from the spiders.

[netcommr]

I used to run a site that was solid #1 on a top 40 term at Google. I contributed it being locked there due to the sites continual growth. Rarely pages were ever changed once placed. But, I continually added new pages to the site, all on a closely related theme. At least made a submission of 1 new page per day to Google. When I left that company to move on to other things, 30 days later it was on page 3. 15 months later it is nowhere to be found, but that is due to the new webmaster destroying what I had done, sad to see but thats another point. The main point I wanted to make was I would get a new page in and it would just site right on #1 for its targeted term on the first index, I wouldn't touch it, but it was a NEW page. I honestly believe that Google has nothing to do with age, in fact a major shift in search engine technology is for fresh content. Look at the story about search engines not being able to report quickly about the World Trade Center incedent, or AlltheWeb's new daily update feeds. Inktomi and Altavista paid inclution with contant updates (Excite right behind them)... All the engines are going to look at ways of getting fresh current content into the index quicker for display. I don't think the old age thing that AV used to do (if) will be any concerne tomorrow.

Forget about age of a page, get another link!

[IanTurner]

netcommr I like that take on things, I do constantly change most of the sites I maintain and am always looking to add content rather than redesign.

Interesting take on the submitting new pages to Google though, most of the wisdom is to let Google spider new pages as they are added.