: Versioned pages: making sure Google points to the current The open-source Sinon project has some docs that are versioned per-release. That means that when searching for sinon documentation, you

@Heady270

Your approach of having the "current" documents in the same place all the time should work fine, as long as you make them the easiest to find on your website. Then:


They will be the most prominent docs on your website to Googlebot
They will be the most prominent docs on your website to users
Most links will be created towards the "current" documents
Google will prefer the "current" version most often


I've seen Google's John Mueller recommend your "current" approach for "events" websites. For an event website, you would put the pages for this year's event on the main page and move previous years' pages to archive URLs.



Another approach to consider would be using canonical tags. You could mark the latest version of the documentation as canonical. Every time you release a new version you would change all the canonical tags in every version of the documentation to point to the latest version.

When using canonical tags, Google will only index one copy of your documentation. Users will always find the most recent version. If they try searching for an older version, they may not be able to find it.



Comparing the two approaches, the canonical tags are quicker. You could have the latest version in the search results in a just a few weeks. Your current documentation might take some time to get ranked well. You could hurry the process up by changing all the URLs for all old versions. Redirect all old versions to the current version and create new archive URLs for the old documentation versions.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Cody1181609

Good Way


Links to your newer version documents from as many location you can. The higher links means the higher position it will get. So you can point to your newer version docs from old docs pages, like this is outdated page, please refer new version. You can also point from sidebar/homepage/other-important pages which also have good amount of incoming links.


Bad Way


If those old pages are not important for search users, means it does not solve user query, then you can use canonical link tag. So If your old docs contain canonical link tag which point to newer version of docs , then those old docs will disappear from search results. It meas google will de-index your old docs but still user can access it. So this is better option than redirection.


Ugly way


You can use rel prev or next markup as well, which mostly give high priority (It's purely based on the search results I seen personally on Google) to first webpage. Actually it is mostly used for pagination only, but you can use for your docs version as well. The plus point of this way is, Google can still index and show your old docs on the search results.

Vote Up Vote Down