11 ms·

one aspect of this that's overlooked in the discussion is how google penalises pages for bad core web vitals. instead of marking a single page bad and reducing

by adzicg 3y ago

one aspect of this that's overlooked in the discussion is how google penalises pages for bad core web vitals. instead of marking a single page bad and reducing its ranking, google decides using some weird algorithm to bundle a bunch of pages together into a group and penalise them based on the average core vitals metrics in the group. this would explain easily why old content is not worth keeping around. older pages might not be optimised for current web vitals metrics, but they can bring down stuff you care about a lot. SEO is black magic and astrology, so there's a lot of guessing going around, but I think I can vouch for this as this particular issue happened to one of the sites I maintain, and it caused the homepage to lose lots of traffic because it was bundled as related with some ancient blog posts. the homepage performed quite well according to all the metrics, but old pages did not, and until Google started penalising groups last year it didn't make a difference to keep the old pages around. Since they started penalising random groups, something that's important can be affected by something old and irrelevant, and the feedback loop is very slow. It takes 28 days to get feedback from the web console about any potential changes to page performance, so I tried fixing the old pages in a few ways, then just gave up and deleted them. the average rose up, the penalty to the whole group was gone, and the homepage again started getting a decent amount of traffic.

Zambyte 3y ago
We should not be optimizing for search engines. We should be optimizing for humans. If Google wants to shoot themselves in the foot by refusing to show their users the content they're looking for, let them. Don't let Google drag you down with them by encouraging you to make your site worse.
- thfuran 3y ago
  And how do you propose making that happen?
  - Zambyte 3y ago
    1. Identify a target audience 2. Identify what that audience wants (by asking them) 3. Build what the target audience asked for if you agree that it is a sensible thing to create. 4. Tell the target audience that you have built your thing. Note that "target audience" here is probably not Google, but on all 4 points, SEO replaces "target audience" with "Google". Pruning old information is not something that any group of humans have requested besides Google.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - abduhl 3y ago
      Isn’t the most effective way to do 4 to get your thing at the top of Google?
      - Zambyte 3y ago
        If I want to tell my mom something, the most effective way is not to try to sneak my message into some search result of hers. When I say "target audience" and "humans" I mean it in the most literal sense. The most effective way to tell people that you built something for them is to tell them.
        adventured 3y ago
        The premise you're suggesting is only the most effective way to tell a small number of people (ie tell them directly). That's why radio, TV, newspaper advertising was so effective for so long. Even for a small convenience store, larger scale - mass audience, automated - advertising is almost always a necessity and a far more effective use of time.
        lolinder 3y ago
        Let's make this concrete. Let's say you're CNET—your target audience is millions upon millions of people who are interested in tech news. What is your alternative strategy for telling these tens of millions of people that you have a new article on topic X? Note that only a tiny fraction of your audience is already subscribed to some form of push notification from your service.
- dragontamer 3y ago
  That's all good in theory and all, but we all know that the #1 step of most humans is to type a search into Google, and that Humans refuse to look at anything outside the top page of hits (maybe the first ~5 entries). The name of the game, if you're trying to serve humans, is to get to the top ~5 entries on Google.
  - Zambyte 3y ago
    My website is https://robbyzambito.me https://robbyzambito.me. Did you discover that from Google? Did you refuse to look at that link because it wasn't presented as a top 5 hit on Google? Are you not human? My point is that information can be propagated outside of search engines very easily. Every link on Hacker News is presented to you outside of a search engine. Optimize for humans. Tell humans that you made something. If Google doesn't want to service their users, that's not a problem you should work on fixing.
    - dragontamer 3y ago
      Are you seriously suggesting that manual word of mouth marketing over niche forums has the same reach as hitting the top 5 hits on Google through Search Engine Optimization?
      - Zambyte 3y ago
        No. I'm arguing that "reach" is not something you should strive for. Quality is.
        dragontamer 3y ago
        That's all well and all, but CNET is an advertising supported website, so "reach" is its revenue stream.
        Zambyte 3y ago
        Okay. And do you think that's a good thing?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- pessimizer 3y ago
  That sounds instead like optimizing your car for the parking lot. If Google doesn't see your site, you've got to put 100x the effort into marketing that site.
crazygringo 3y ago
> older pages might not be optimised for current web vitals metrics For news sites that's unlikely to be the reason. Generally speaking, old online pages are the same as new online pages, because all the article content is just pulled from a database, a CMS. All the rest of the page (menu, ads, footer, etc.) is modern and kept up-to-date. It's not like an article from 2007 is using the same HTML that it was in 2007. Just because on your personal blog, you'd left old blog pages on some ancient clunky Wordpress (?) version, that isn't how large publishing sites operate.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  Not always true – see e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/23394.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/23394.stm
- lolinder 3y ago
  A large website wants to have its current content cached as much as possible—ideally very few users should be hitting the CMS directly—but it doesn't make sense to cache content from 1995 on the off chance that today is the day someone needs it. In fact, to speed up database performance on your current content it may even make sense to store your archives in a different, less beefy database. However, if Google penalizes slow performance on any page, even archives, these strategies could damage your search rankings even for your current content.
- adzicg 3y ago
  It’a not that simple. Older content might not have webp images variants available, or styling might be optimised for newer stuff and cause old pages to reflow, and many other things like that. Key web vitals change over time and it’s often a mix of content, styling and scripting that needs to be optimised to fix CVW issues. Revisiting old content and rebuilding old assets might not be worth it. I’m not talking from a perspective of maintaining a personal blog, but a product web site that currently gets about 1.5 million visits from organic search per month. It’s not CNET, granted, but not a trivial site either.
- mattigames 3y ago
  A lot of CMS software allowed you to add custom HTML, so there are hundreds of thousands of images with "float:left" hardcoded among many other deprecated HTML stuff that Google Search doesn't like.
A_D_E_P_T 3y ago
Google's relationship with blogs is downright schizophrenic. So it seems you can be penalized for keeping old content around. You're also penalized for not generating and updating new content all the damn time. The marketing guys I work with are always on my case about this. "We need new content!" "We have nothing to say on our corporate website that people will want to read." "It doesn't matter. Write stuff anyway, for SEO." "You're not going to get me to publish blogspam just because you think it's what Google wants." "B-but you don't understand! You need to. Everybody else is doing it!"
- slashdev 3y ago
  Fortunately LLMs should end this idea of ranking content. It’s going to poison the well so badly search engines will have to rank on everything but content. Except links already proved too spammy and Google had to change gears to prioritize content. I wonder where that leaves them now.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    It will leave them in a tarpit of their own making. Google was useful only in a world where content quality mattered.
rhaway84773 3y ago
I don’t have SEO expertise but I did dabble in it a little bit on a need to basis and listened to a few experts, etc. And the people dismissing the idea that pruning older pages has no SEO benefit don’t know what they’re talking about because frankly the only way to know if it does or doesn’t have an effect is to try it. Also, there seems to be a segment of people laughing at CNET because Google explicitly says this will not benefit. Well, these people know even less because Google absolutely lies. Both by making knowingly false statements but more so by making statements which are correct by the letter but not the spirit. So, for example, Google might say it does not penalize a site for having too many older pages at all. And this may be true (or it may not, but let’s assume it’s true. But it’s entirely possible that eliminating older pages does improve CNET’s SEO scores. It’s entirely possible that while Google does not penalize old pages, it penalizes websites that have a lot of pages that look similar. So, for example, CNET probably had 15 articles which sound very similar for each version of the iPhone that is released. They have a bunch of review articles for different products in the same category thst look very similar. They have articles comparing the 2021 Lenovo with the 2023 model that looks similar. And Google’s algo May start thinking it’s an SEO targeting content farm and hurt CNET’s SEO score accordingly.

by adzicg 3y ago

Zambyte 3y ago

We should not be optimizing for search engines. We should be optimizing for humans. If Google wants to shoot themselves in the foot by refusing to show their users the content they're looking for, let them. Don't let Google drag you down with them by encouraging you to make your site worse.

thfuran 3y ago
And how do you propose making that happen?
- Zambyte 3y ago
  1. Identify a target audience 2. Identify what that audience wants (by asking them) 3. Build what the target audience asked for if you agree that it is a sensible thing to create. 4. Tell the target audience that you have built your thing. Note that "target audience" here is probably not Google, but on all 4 points, SEO replaces "target audience" with "Google". Pruning old information is not something that any group of humans have requested besides Google.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - abduhl 3y ago
    Isn’t the most effective way to do 4 to get your thing at the top of Google?
    - Zambyte 3y ago
      If I want to tell my mom something, the most effective way is not to try to sneak my message into some search result of hers. When I say "target audience" and "humans" I mean it in the most literal sense. The most effective way to tell people that you built something for them is to tell them.
      - adventured 3y ago
        The premise you're suggesting is only the most effective way to tell a small number of people (ie tell them directly). That's why radio, TV, newspaper advertising was so effective for so long. Even for a small convenience store, larger scale - mass audience, automated - advertising is almost always a necessity and a far more effective use of time.
      - lolinder 3y ago
        Let's make this concrete. Let's say you're CNET—your target audience is millions upon millions of people who are interested in tech news. What is your alternative strategy for telling these tens of millions of people that you have a new article on topic X? Note that only a tiny fraction of your audience is already subscribed to some form of push notification from your service.
dragontamer 3y ago
That's all good in theory and all, but we all know that the #1 step of most humans is to type a search into Google, and that Humans refuse to look at anything outside the top page of hits (maybe the first ~5 entries). The name of the game, if you're trying to serve humans, is to get to the top ~5 entries on Google.
- Zambyte 3y ago
  My website is https://robbyzambito.me https://robbyzambito.me. Did you discover that from Google? Did you refuse to look at that link because it wasn't presented as a top 5 hit on Google? Are you not human? My point is that information can be propagated outside of search engines very easily. Every link on Hacker News is presented to you outside of a search engine. Optimize for humans. Tell humans that you made something. If Google doesn't want to service their users, that's not a problem you should work on fixing.
  - dragontamer 3y ago
    Are you seriously suggesting that manual word of mouth marketing over niche forums has the same reach as hitting the top 5 hits on Google through Search Engine Optimization?
    - Zambyte 3y ago
      No. I'm arguing that "reach" is not something you should strive for. Quality is.
      - dragontamer 3y ago
        That's all well and all, but CNET is an advertising supported website, so "reach" is its revenue stream.
        Zambyte 3y ago
        Okay. And do you think that's a good thing?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
pessimizer 3y ago
That sounds instead like optimizing your car for the parking lot. If Google doesn't see your site, you've got to put 100x the effort into marketing that site.

crazygringo 3y ago

> older pages might not be optimised for current web vitals metrics For news sites that's unlikely to be the reason. Generally speaking, old online pages are the same as new online pages, because all the article content is just pulled from a database, a CMS. All the rest of the page (menu, ads, footer, etc.) is modern and kept up-to-date. It's not like an article from 2007 is using the same HTML that it was in 2007. Just because on your personal blog, you'd left old blog pages on some ancient clunky Wordpress (?) version, that isn't how large publishing sites operate.

Tijdreiziger 3y ago
Not always true – see e.g. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/23394.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/23394.stm
lolinder 3y ago
A large website wants to have its current content cached as much as possible—ideally very few users should be hitting the CMS directly—but it doesn't make sense to cache content from 1995 on the off chance that today is the day someone needs it. In fact, to speed up database performance on your current content it may even make sense to store your archives in a different, less beefy database. However, if Google penalizes slow performance on any page, even archives, these strategies could damage your search rankings even for your current content.
adzicg 3y ago
It’a not that simple. Older content might not have webp images variants available, or styling might be optimised for newer stuff and cause old pages to reflow, and many other things like that. Key web vitals change over time and it’s often a mix of content, styling and scripting that needs to be optimised to fix CVW issues. Revisiting old content and rebuilding old assets might not be worth it. I’m not talking from a perspective of maintaining a personal blog, but a product web site that currently gets about 1.5 million visits from organic search per month. It’s not CNET, granted, but not a trivial site either.
mattigames 3y ago
A lot of CMS software allowed you to add custom HTML, so there are hundreds of thousands of images with "float:left" hardcoded among many other deprecated HTML stuff that Google Search doesn't like.

A_D_E_P_T 3y ago

Google's relationship with blogs is downright schizophrenic. So it seems you can be penalized for keeping old content around. You're also penalized for not generating and updating new content all the damn time. The marketing guys I work with are always on my case about this. "We need new content!" "We have nothing to say on our corporate website that people will want to read." "It doesn't matter. Write stuff anyway, for SEO." "You're not going to get me to publish blogspam just because you think it's what Google wants." "B-but you don't understand! You need to. Everybody else is doing it!"

slashdev 3y ago
Fortunately LLMs should end this idea of ranking content. It’s going to poison the well so badly search engines will have to rank on everything but content. Except links already proved too spammy and Google had to change gears to prioritize content. I wonder where that leaves them now.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  It will leave them in a tarpit of their own making. Google was useful only in a world where content quality mattered.

rhaway84773 3y ago

I don’t have SEO expertise but I did dabble in it a little bit on a need to basis and listened to a few experts, etc. And the people dismissing the idea that pruning older pages has no SEO benefit don’t know what they’re talking about because frankly the only way to know if it does or doesn’t have an effect is to try it. Also, there seems to be a segment of people laughing at CNET because Google explicitly says this will not benefit. Well, these people know even less because Google absolutely lies. Both by making knowingly false statements but more so by making statements which are correct by the letter but not the spirit. So, for example, Google might say it does not penalize a site for having too many older pages at all. And this may be true (or it may not, but let’s assume it’s true. But it’s entirely possible that eliminating older pages does improve CNET’s SEO scores. It’s entirely possible that while Google does not penalize old pages, it penalizes websites that have a lot of pages that look similar. So, for example, CNET probably had 15 articles which sound very similar for each version of the iPhone that is released. They have a bunch of review articles for different products in the same category thst look very similar. They have articles comparing the 2021 Lenovo with the 2023 model that looks similar. And Google’s algo May start thinking it’s an SEO targeting content farm and hurt CNET’s SEO score accordingly.