Outdated content: find it, update it, date it honestly

Why outdated content costs trust

A visitor who reads “New for 2023” or a deadline that passed last year starts to wonder what else is no longer true: the price, the opening hours, the phone number. Google calls trust the most important aspect of helpful content and writes that informational pages should be factually accurate. An old date is a small mistake, but everyone can see it.

Typical signs

• Dates and deadlines that have passed: “Register by 30 September 2024”.
• “New”, “current” or “coming soon” next to a year that is over.
• “Prices as of March 2022”, or prices that no longer match your shop or your price list.
• Offers, discounts, events and job ads that have ended.
• References to old laws, rules, standards or software versions.
• Contact persons who have left, old opening hours, dead links.
• A copyright year in the footer that is several years old.

Review regularly

1. 1List the pages that age fastest: offers, events, prices, contact, opening hours and legal information.
2. 2Give each group an interval, for example monthly for offers and events, every quarter for prices, once a year for the rest.
3. 3Name one person per group who checks and decides.
4. 4Search the whole site whenever something changes: a new price, a new product version, a new law.
5. 5Write down the date of each check, so the next one starts from there.

Update, remove or redirect

• Update when the page is still useful: correct the facts, delete what has expired, and say what changed if it matters to readers.
• Remove when the page has no use and no successor. A removed page should return the status code 404 or 410. According to Google, 4xx codes (except 429) are treated the same: such URLs are not indexed and drop out of the index over time.
• Redirect permanently with 301 or 308 when a new page replaces the old one. Google advises permanent redirects when you are sure the redirect will not be reverted. A temporary redirect (302, 307) keeps the old address in search results.

Redirect only to a page that really answers the same question. Sending every old address to the home page leaves visitors without the content they were looking for.

Honest dates

In its guide on helpful content, Google asks site owners whether they change the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed, and treats this as a warning sign. Adding or removing a lot of content only because you hope it helps your ranking does not help either, according to Google. Change the date when the content has really changed.

• Show the date visibly and say what it is: published or updated.
• Use the same date in the structured data (datePublished, dateModified) as on the page.
• Do not use a future date or the date of an event as the date of the page.
• Keep other dates on the page to a minimum, so search engines pick the right one.

Work with Do4U

The Outdated content tool searches a page or a text for things that can go stale: past dates and deadlines, years next to words such as “new”, “as of” or “coming soon”, the copyright year, old dates in the data of the page and prices to check. You enter the address of a page or paste a text and, if you like, a reference date. The code quotes every place exactly as it stands. The AI rates each one (probably outdated, unclear, probably fine), gives a short reason and suggests a new wording without inventing a date or a price. The tool knows the keywords in German, English, Polish, French and Spanish.

Do4U finds the candidates, you check and decide what is true today. Up-to-date content makes a page more credible for readers; it is no promise of rankings or traffic.