The Freshness update rolled out on November 2011 with algorithmic changes to the search engine that prioritized up-to-date content. It helped shape the search engine into what it is today where users can view the latest score of their favorite sports teams in a real-time match right in SERPs instantaneously.
The Freshness update emphasized the importance of publishing content regularly. To continue providing relevant results to users, Google launched these changes to its search engine to identify recent results for each query better.
These are the topics that were prioritized by the Freshness update:
The Freshness update had a more considerable impact, affecting about 35 percent of searches. This figure is much higher than Panda 1.0 with just 12 percent. Google clarified that the algorithmic change had an effect on at least one result on the page.
The Freshness algorithmic update works closely with Caffeine which implemented infrastructure changes that emphasized real-time crawling. The search engine’s ability to go through new pages more quickly has led to an ever-expanding index and faster ranking integration. It balanced users’ need to find the most relevant content immediately with site operators’ expectations of having their pages show up in the SERPs once it goes live.
There were concerns about the criteria that Google uses to determine fresh content. Webmasters asked if making tiny changes to a page can give it a boost as well as what happens when publishers publish and republish stories to get the top spots in the SERPs.
The freshness of your content is one ranking signal that Google uses to determine the relevance of your page for a particular query. Here are a few reasons why publishing posts regularly can help your website in SERPs:
The implication behind this process is that websites that regularly update their posts with relevant information are more focused on providing valuable content to users rather than just making pages for the sake of it. Ensuring that all your articles are factual also adds to your authority and credibility as a brand.