Goran MajićAug 10, 2023
"Unfortunately, we are penalized by the modern internet for leaving all previously published content live on our site.” ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
#seo
https://gizmodo.com/cnet-deletes-thousands-old-articles-google-search-seo-1850721475
CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles to Game Google Search

Google says deleting old pages to bamboozle Search is "not a thing!" as CNET erases its history.

Gizmodo
Show threadJohn MuellerAug 10, 2023
@goranmajic Their "internal" memo sounds kinda reasonable - at least it's not "old content = bad": https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/23903730-faq-on-cnet-content-pruning-aug-2023
DocumentCloud

Show threadGoran MajićAug 10, 2023
@johnmu i had this kind of discussions at work. It's when SEOs start hallucinating a lot: we can't delete because internal linking, we should delete because crawling, we should transform "old" news to everygreen content... most of the time these discussions are without precise value. I mean, several 1000 articles is not a lot for a news site.
But what do they mean by "we are penalized"??? Sounds like they are trying to blame somebody for their own clean-up action to get rid of their own junk. 😀
Show threadJohn Mueller
@goranmajic My feeling is that they're generally trying to do good things by maintaining & prioritizing their important content. Not everyone is versed in SEO language, and the technicalities we assign to specific words. It's a chance to explain some of the details that we fixate on, or at least to try to :-).
Aug 10, 2023 at 11:16amWeb
Show threadGoran MajićAug 10, 2023
@johnmu probably true, but a little to much drama at CNET 😀