Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said on X that just because content is old, it doesn’t mean that content is unhelpful. He said, “Just because something is older doesn’t make it unhelpful.”

The question was from Matt Cannat who asked, “Would be good for Google to release guidance for news publishers. There’s no way we can go back in the past and update topical articles — these sites are vastly different than those who are building authority on specific KPs with evergreen posts.”

In which Danny Sullivan from Google replied, “If content is written for people first, that’s all that needs to be considered (as our guidance says). Just because something is older doesn’t make it unhelpful.”

This was in reference to my coverage that the helpful content update uses machine learning.

Here are those posts:

If content is written for people first, that’s all that needs to be considered (as our guidance says). Just because something is older doesn’t make it unhelpful.

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) October 30, 2023

We have a lot of old content on the topic of old content here.

Forum discussion at X.