The Google algorithm - Stale and fresh content

Few people outside the world of SEO know about this document. Filed in March 2005 it lays out all the principles behind Google's mysterious algorithm and makes a fascinating read.

In 2009 SEO companies will need to think more about the historical data that Google is accumulating. The patent application talks about Google measuring the 'freshness' or 'staleness' of websites and webpages. A fresh page is one which has regular updates such as the BBC homepage, wikipedia pages or blogs etc. A stale page may never change from when it was originally created. Having said that, a stale page is not necessarily a bad thing, depending on the type of query, Google may decide that a stale page is more useful and relevant to the user's query and for other seasonal searches or news-based queries, Google will return a fresher page.

But it is not merely the changes to a page that Google is tracking, it records the changing themes on the page, the numbers of links (and link text) coming in and going out, whether the page linking-in is stale or fresh, measuring changes in anchor text pointing to the page and comparing them to the changing themes on the page etc etc. and all of this is measured over time and stored in the Google data centres for eternity.

The conclusions that can be drawn from this part of the patent application are the basic tenets of white-hat SEO which are - create an interesting site which people will want to use, re-visit and link to, with plenty of regularly updated good quality content and do all this at a natural steady pace.