HCU Hit Because Fake Freshness?

[joecool16]

Hey everyone, sorry for the back-to-back long posts (there's another one coming), but I'm looking for some advice on two issues that I think may have contributed to my site getting hit during the HCU update. Instead of combining them into one long-ass post that nobody will want to read, I've separated them.

Faking Freshness

I think a major part for my site getting hit by HCU was "faking fresh content." I don't see a lot of people talking about this in relation to the HCU update, but if I remember correctly, this was one of the first things Google said the September HCU update tackled.

Background

All of my core content was originally created in 2018. I'm in the technology niche, so I've updated this content hundreds of times since it was originally published.

Up until earlier this year, I'd make changes (sometimes big, sometimes small) to the content, hit Update in Wordpress (which would update the modified date sent to Google), and move on. This worked fine, Google would catch the update, and show the modified date in the results.

Earlier this year I had a noticeable traffic drop. In looking into the issue, it wasn't a major ranking drop. Instead, Google stopped showing the modified date in the search results and instead showed the original published date.

In the technology niche, on guides that had been updated to be relevant for 2023, Google was saying they were from 2018.

Long story short, nobody was clicking my "ancient" content that looked like it was five years old.

When viewing the page source on competing content, I noticed that they were changing the published dates of their content.

So, I did a round of content updates and changed the published dates of my content in Wordpress.

My site had been on cruise control for awhile, so I hadn't been as update-to-date on Google's guidelines as I should have been. I wasn't aware that Google does not want "fake freshness" if the content doesn't change substantially. I guess Google showing my published date should have signaled that this was the case. But I just chalked it up to some weird indexing issue.

Either way, changing the published date worked, and traffic returned to normal levels.

Another Round of Changing Published Dates

Around August, I decided to do another round of updates on a set of guides that weren't performing as well as they had in the past.

They were still very relevant, so instead of doing major overhauls to the content, I made very minor adjustments and just updated all of the published dates on them.

Whoops...

I'd like to go on a rant on why the way Google approaches freshness is insane, but it would be a waste of time, because my site relies on Google's traffic and I have to play by their rules.

In any case, about a month after I updated the content, HCU rolled out and my site got smashed.

Again, the date changes may have been the reason I got hit, or it may just be a general EEAT issue. Either way, I feel like I need to do something about the content that likely sent out a fake freshness signal.

What Should I Do Now?

My initial thought was that, if my site got hit due to faking freshness, I would just need to wait until the articles that I changed the published dates on had aged a bit. Maybe once they stopped being "brand-new" fresh, the classifier would just fall off.

It's been about a month and a half and traffic has not returned. Maybe I need to wait longer. Or, again, maybe this isn't the actual problem.

Regardless, I feel like I've waited long enough and I need to do something.

The obvious solution is to revamp/rewrite the content, but there are three ways I'm contemplating going about it:

1. Revamp the content on the same URL
2. Revamp the content and redirect to a new URL
3. Change the published date back to 2018, let it sit for a month or so, then revamp the content

The idea with the third option would be to try and trick Google...

"Hey Google, this page can't have possibly tried to fake freshness! It's from 2018! You can remove the fake freshness classifier now..."

Then, once I've "tricked" Google, completely revamp and update the content.

"Look at this ACTUALLY fresh content, Google!"

Google's algorithm is probably smarter than this, but maybe it's not?

Ultimately, I'm leaning towards options one or two to tackle this issue, but I was wondering what your guys' thoughts on all this would be? Did anyone else update dates on content like this? How do you guys handle dates when updating content?

 

[Darth]

This post was too long to read TBH, but from the gist I got you should:

1. Roll back the published date updates.
2. Keep modified date and don't worry about disabling it - just edit as normal.
3. Nuke the publisheddate from your entire HMTL code.

 

[harrytwatter]

Thanks for sharing, I haven't heard this particular take on HCU and dates. Given it's such a low lift manipulation and pretty much everyone abuses it then Google taking action seems logical.

I'd assume it is in tandem with other factors though as that seems like a pretty petty reason to nuke a site imo but I don't have as much disdain for affiliates as big G..

 

[joecool16]

This post was too long to read TBH, but from the gist I got you should:

1. Roll back the published date updates.
2. Keep modified date and don't worry about disabling it - just edit as normal.
3. Nuke the publisheddate from your entire HMTL code.

LOL sorry! I'm in long-form content mode and probably overexplained that.

Thank you for the advice. Will get rid of publisheddate.

Thanks for sharing, I haven't heard this particular take on HCU and dates. Given it's such a low lift manipulation and pretty much everyone abuses it then Google taking action seems logical.

I'd assume it is in tandem with other factors though as that seems like a pretty petty reason to nuke a site imo but I don't have as much disdain for affiliates as big G..

Think this was where I first saw it.

https://www.searchenginejournal.com...ntent-update-changes-to-the-algorithm/496454/

Basically, Google added the following line to their HCU guidelines:

Are you changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed?

 

[Ryuzaki]

You would think that Google wouldn't roll this into the HCU with some kind of "date trust" metric, but who knows. That'd be a real dumb reason to down-rank a high quality site. But Google is obviously not making the best decisions right now and are scrambling to adjust past decisions.

Ideally, they would just compare the present content with the previous content and determine there wasn't enough of a change, and then not accept the new date for their freshness signals.

Anyways, I doubt it's a "major" contributor to any problem you're facing. The vast majority of sites are facing the same problems and it's very unlikely they're all getting into the CMS and changing the native functionality to show Modified Dates or are adjusting their Published Dates. Some are, but it's a minuscule fraction of those who got hit. I've manipulated it with great effect in the past, publicly here on the forum. I hadn't done it for a couple of years before the HCU and still got hit, as did most everyone.

I would simply go back to displaying Published Dates. I wouldn't change them any more, and I would only change them manually (which is what would have to be done with Published vs. Modified) when you make substantial changes. I wouldn't try to go backwards in time to figure out some previous date to change to. Just stop manipulating it from here forward.

The complexity of rewriting entire posts, moving URLs, and doing 301 redirects sounds needlessly involved for what is likely not a major factor. Also, 301's tend to send all the signals, good and bad, over, so that would probably be shooting yourself in the foot.