Re:Don't Post Evergreen Content on Medium
by tkrunning on Friday December 14, 2018 @07:34AM
(#18680352)
This is definitely true. What I'm referring to in the article is cases when you've done a proper update of the article to make sure it's up to date, added new information, etc.
I actually hope Google will start comparing versions of articles before/after date updates, and penalize those that update the date without updating the content.
And while I appreciate good updated content, I still insist that the _publish_ date should not change. In your case, the publish date ought to be many years ago. The _updated_ date, however, may be re-written with those refreshes. Content should include both (when applicable) and indexes should reflect this.
Nor should you. The published date is immutable. You may, however, set a new _updated date_ with your last update. We need to separate these ideas, because there has been rampant abuse of rank preference for fresh dates. Tech (and I assume non-tech) gossip sites are terrible for this.
They seem to update all articles to be mere hours or days ago in perpetuity, despite no meaningful changes. This has to stop. It makes the dates meaningless.