在最新一期的“Search Off The Record”播客中，谷歌搜索关系团队成员 John Mueller 和 Lizzi Sassman 深入探讨了如何应对网站“内容衰减”问题。

随着时间的推移，过时的内容是所有网站都会面临的一个自然问题，谷歌已经制定了一些策略，而不仅仅是删除旧网页。

虽然删除陈旧内容有时是必要的，但谷歌建议采取一种有意的、针对特定格式的方法来解决内容衰减问题。

存档指南与过渡指南

谷歌建议不要立即删除过时的内容，如引用停产产品或服务的材料。

Sassman 解释说，过早删除内容可能会让读者感到困惑，导致糟糕的阅读体验：

“So, if I’m trying to find out like what happened, I almost need that first thing to know. Like, “What happened to you?” And, otherwise, it feels almost like an error. Like, “Did I click a wrong link or they redirect to the wrong thing?””

Sassman 说，在废弃期提供过渡性的“说明”页面可以避免混淆。

临时过渡指南会告知读者过时的内容，同时引导他们使用更新的资源。

Sassman 继续说道：

“That could be like an intermediary step where maybe you don’t do that forever, but you do it during the transition period where, for like six months, you have them go funnel them to the explanation, and then after that, all right, call it a day. Like enough people know about it. Enough time has passed. We can just redirect right to the thing and people aren’t as confused anymore.”

何时更新内容？何时撰写新内容

对于提供权威概述的参考指南和内容，Google 建议更新信息以保持准确性和相关性。

不过，出于存档目的，重大更新可能需要创建新作品，而不是编辑原作品。

Sassman 解释说：

“I still want to retain the original piece of content as it was, in case we need to look back or refer to it, and to change it or rehabilitate it into a new thing would almost be worth republishing as a new blog post if we had that much additional things to say about it.”

删除可能有害的内容

如果过期信息可能有害，谷歌建议删除网页。

Sassman 说，她是在决定如何处理涉及过时结构化数据的指南时得出这一结论的：

“I think something that we deleted recently was the “How to Structure Data” documentation page, which I thought we should just get rid of it… it almost felt like that’s going to be more confusing to leave it up for a period of time.

And actually it would be negative if people are still adding markup, thinking they’re going to get something. So what we ended up doing was just delete the page and redirect to the changelog entry so that, if people clicked “How To Structure Data” still, if there was a link somewhere, they could still find out what happened to that feature.”

内部审计流程

为了保持内容的时效性，Google 建议实施一套系统来审核老化的内容，并将其标记出来以供审查。

Sassman 说，她为在规定时间内未被检查的页面设置了自动警报：

“Oh, so we have a little robot to come and remind us, “Hey, you should come investigate this documentation page. It’s been x amount of time. Please come and look at it again to make sure that all of your links are still up to date, that it’s still fresh.””

背景是关键

谷歌处理内容衰减的技巧主要是了解过时资料的来龙去脉。

您要防止访问者在不清楚的情况下偶然发现过时的页面。

谷歌推荐的其他策略包括：

醒目的横幅或告示，说明页面的过时性质

列出原始出版日期

提供内嵌注释，解释旧版参考资料或屏幕截图可能过时的原因

如何帮助您

遵循谷歌的建议来解决内容衰减问题，可以让您在多个方面受益：

改善用户体验：通过提供清晰的解释、过渡指南和重定向，可以确保访问者不会遇到混乱或中断的页面。

维护信任和信誉：删除可能有害或不准确的内容并及时更新信息，表明您致力于提供可靠和值得信赖的资源。

更好的搜索引擎优化: 定期审核和更新网页可以提高网站的搜索排名和知名度。

存档目的: 通过创建新内容而不是编辑旧内容，您可以保留网站演变的历史记录。

简化内容管理: 实施内部审计流程可以更容易地识别和处理过时或有问题的页面。

通过积极主动地解决内容衰减问题，您可以使自己的网站成为有价值的资源，提高搜索引擎优化，并保持内容库的有序性。