Content Freshness

Content freshness refers to how recently a certain body of content was published, modified or updated to reflect the most recent developments in the topic.

While updating content regularly is good practice, not all content needs to be regularly updated. For instance, if you run a food recipe blog or a website about historical facts, you may not need to update old posts every year.

If, however, you run a site about product reviews, you may need to revisit old content regularly to ensure that it stays up-to-date with the latest product features.

3.4.2 Does Content Freshness Matter for SEO?

While freshness is not a direct ranking factor in and of itself, for certain kinds of content, Google will prioritize the most recent content over others. Google explains in its search quality ratings guidelines that for queries that demand fresh information, it will rate pages based on how recent their content is.

Source

Google made content freshness a priority for certain kinds of content as early as 2011, when it unveiled its freshness algorithm update. The search giant said: “Search results … are best when they’re fresh.”

If Google senses a sudden increase in search queries about “hurricane in Florida”, it may deem this to be an important topic about an event unfolding in real time. As such, it would be important for people to have the latest updates about this event so they can stay safe. Google is likely to prioritize recent or recently updated content as opposed to an article published about tropical hurricanes in Florida that was last updated five years ago.