Google Says Do not Delete Older Content material If It is Helpful

Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, posted a PSA on Twitter that you should not delete old content from your site because you think Google Search doesn’t like old content. He said it is not true, Google Search can find older content to be helpful. So don’t delete helpful old content.

Danny Sullivan wrote, “Are you deleting content from your site because you somehow believe Google doesn’t like “old” content? That’s not a thing! Our guidance doesn’t encourage this. Older content can still be helpful, too.”

He then posted a link to the official helpful content documentation on Google Search.

This should not surprise anyone, Google has been saying this for years. Here are some older stories I wrote about this topic:

Here is that tweet:

Are you deleting content from your site because you somehow believe Google doesn’t like “old” content? That’s not a thing! Our guidance doesn’t encourage this. Older content can still be helpful, too. Learn more about creating helpful content: https://t.co/NaRQqb1SQx

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 8, 2023

Here is the follow up:

The page itself isn’t likely to rank well. Removing it might mean if you have a massive site that we’re better able to crawl other content on the site. But it doesn’t mean we go “oh, now the whole site is so much better” because of what happens with an individual page.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 9, 2023

Delete what you don’t want to keep – regular maintenance and cleaning up is always good. Just don’t assume that deleting something only because it’s old will improve your site’s SEO magically.

— John Mueller (official) · #MaybeABot (@JohnMu) August 9, 2023

Similarly, keep in mind that just because something doesn’t get a lot of views (eg, old news, obscure information) doesn’t mean it’s not helpful for those who do view it. Focus on the unique value, not on the age, view-count, etc.

— John Mueller (official) · #MaybeABot (@JohnMu) August 9, 2023

If you are wondering why Danny Sullivan tweeted this in the first place, read CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles to Game Google Search at Gizmodo.

Wasn’t the first time I’ve been asked about this recently, so it felt useful to do some mythbusting. Definitely appreciate the article and hope it spreads the word this isn’t something we’re somehow telling people to do. Also to some of the quotes in the piece….

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 9, 2023

“Just because Google says that deleting content in isolation doesn’t provide any SEO benefit, this isn’t always true”

Which … isn’t what we said. We said that if people are deleting content just because they think *old content is somehow bad* that’s — again — not a thing.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 9, 2023

Back to the story, this statement: “Many companies live or die by their performance on Google Search, but Google is tight-lipped about the workings of its algorithms.” We have many, many pages designed to help creators. A good starting place is our Search Essentials…

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 9, 2023

Forum discussion at Twitter.