: Is page age a ranking factor? My website is quite new, only about an year old. I publish one post per day. I am seeing a pattern where pages start getting SEO traffic 15 to 30 days after

@Jamie184

Okay take a deep breath. I am going to contradict the popular answer here.

Let's make one thing clear. Conceptually I will replace page age with content age. While it seems synonymous, one is more technically correct.

Is page age a ranking factor?

No. Not at all.

Are there factors that allow an older page to perform? Quite possibly, depending upon many other important factors. Older content relies upon many factors to perform and not age. Age does not enter the equation. However newer content can short circuit this fact.

Google has two rules. One of which is, What does a metric say about content quality, popularity, etc? A pages age says nothing about content. I used in my comments an example of really lousy content. Should it "rank" better because the lousy content is old? Of course not.

So where do people get confused?

The term rank is often confused. Rank is a resulting metric or sets of metrics based upon more than one factor or metric. Page age is a metric that can be collected, and it certainly is by way of the inception date, however, one metric in of itself is not rank nor can it be. It is a metric. This metric can be used as a factor to be considered where it makes sense to. So is it?

Search queries go through several steps. The first is very basic where all content that appears to match the search query is returned. There are actually several queries to the database that are returned into a blended result set. I have mentioned the headline read order before, this is where it lives. A relatively basic algorithm is applied in returning the result set. More detailed applications of the overall algorithm are applied after the result set is returned using filters.

Those who are familiar with SQL will understand "order by". When you do a query to a database, the query matches the intent of the query then optionally can be ordered by metrics or data within the query. The same is done in search queries. For example, the query against a search engine database must match the search query to the content first then followed by "order by" PageRank. While this a simple example, it does illustrate how search matches content first then basic ranking factors second. Keep this in mind.

There are no factors and metrics that get in the way of the search query matching relevant content even when rank is poor. The mechanism is that the content is returned in a result set that is ordered by all the ranking factors that govern content and sites the primary of which is PageRank. It can also include the sites Trust score, the sites authority on the topic, etc. Once the result set is returned, it is passed through filters that narrow down the result set that either removes content or orders the content differently. The exception here is that "limit" is used within the initial query. Since the web is so vast, it makes sense to limit the size of the result set from the search query. The good news is, this is a reasonably large number that allows for a result set that is sure to capture enough results so that once all of the filters are applied, the SERPs are still quite vast.

Older is not considered as much as new.

Logically speaking, "new" is considered over "old". What do I mean by that? We know that the first result set is returned with all content that seems to match the query. It passes through a series of filters that modify the result set to further match the search intent. What can we determine about the search intent? For example, is there anything in the search query that indicates we want older content? No. While it is possible to signal that you want historical information, search queries can not indicate that you want older content. For example, War of 1812 is a historical topic, however, the search query itself does not indicate a desire for older content. Can you think of a search query that says, I want older content? No. But can you think of a search query that says, I want newer content? Yes. I will get to that. I promise.

Search intent could be for trend content such as news, time relevant content such as product specifications, historical content, research content, etc. The search query will be analyzed for each of these intent. Each of the categories will either benefit from newer content or any content. But no consideration is for older content except for what would be normal ranking factors.

I will use Trend searches as my examples.

For example, you are curious about the recent earthquake in Oaxaca, Mexico. This is a news item that happened yesterday. While there have been other earthquakes in Oaxaca, Mexico, the assumption is that you are interested in the most recent earthquake when the search query does not specify specific a clear intent. I used the search earthquake Oaxaca, Mexico which does not indicate a time period whereas past earthquakes Oaxaca, Mexico does. The first query returns primarily news related results whereas the second only returns a few news related results along with historical content. Remember my promise to address a query for newer content? A search for earthquake yesterday indicates a clear intent for recent content.

What is happening here? Trend searches are not always clear. The new hip hop artists first release hits the charts and skyrockets to the top. Just a search of the name is enough to indicate a trend search you would think. Here, because the artist has only been out for a few months, any content regarding the artist will be relatively new. But what if his name was Byron Benson King? He goes by B.B. Then what? Getting my drift? Search trend data, trusted news sources, SERP performance data, secondary searches, etc. all contribute to skewing trend searches and not factors of the page itself other than the content and general ranking factors that may be lacking for newer content. All of this data together will distinguish the trend for the new artist versus the older King of blues. None of this is a product of any factor of the page other than the content itself, but factors related to search trends.

Now suppose there is no new hip hop artist. A search for B.B. King will return any page written regardless of content age on the subject assuming that rank, authority, expertise, semantics, etc. indicate that the page is worthwhile. Here, the factors are not filtered by trend data but factors some of which can grow over time. This would include links, SERP performance, etc. where indicators could weigh an older page over a newer page. But not always. Consider older content that sucks and simply does not perform well. Should it "rank" higher simply because it is older? No. In fact, there is no consideration for age at all in this case. Only metrics that come with age. Now consider there is a new book on B.B. King that is getting a lot of attention. The author has a web site with fantastic content that has many social media indicators that has brought attention to the new page. Add to this the articles and reviews of the book that are written. Here again, trends skew the results from all to new.

What am I saying?

Content age is not a factor except where a search query potentially indicates a desire for newer content. Not older content. Factors will allow a newer page to perform better than an older page in trend searches. Short of trend searches, news falls into this category, the search results depend upon factors of which content age is not one of them. Have I been clear on this?

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@Heady270

When you are seeing that it takes Google 15 to 30 days to start sending traffic to a page, that is most likely because it is taking that long for Google to find and index content on your domain. As your domain gains trust, Google will find and index pages you post much more quickly. Google comes and re-crawls your site based on how many inbound links it has. As you gain links, Googlebot will fetch content from your site much more often. Many trustworthy sites, including this one, get their new content indexed within hours.

Google certainly uses page age as a ranking factor, but it isn't quite as straightforward as you might think.

For news queries a newer page is a bonus. Google has a concept they call "query deserves freshness" or QDF. News searches need freshly updated pages to please users and Google prefers those fresh pages for those queries.

For other queries Google usually prefers established pages that have a history of pleasing users. We call that content "evergreen content."

Google constantly collects additional data about your pages. It views how users react to them. It sees if users use the back button to come back to Google after viewing your content. It sees if the page attracts external links. Older pages have much more history. The ones with positive history will rank well.

As your page ages, Google is able to collect more and more data about your page. When your page is high quality, Google will eventually notice that and start trusting it. If it is mediocre quality or there is higher quality competition your page may never rank well.

When you first post evergreen content, it may enjoy a honeymoon period where Google "tastes" the page. Google may try it out on the first page of the results to see how users react to it. It usually doesn't stay there unless it gets a very positive click through rate. After the test, it may fall in rankings substantially, often back several pages. It may take it years to get back to the first page of search results.

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@Odierno851

It is ranking factor, and I have read that in some approve patent of Google, whenever I will find link, I will try to share it here.

Actually it is ranking factor because the information on that page is stay for a long time. Whenever google request that page it is always display that information, hence it is ranking factor. And it's beneficial for user.

There are so many sites who just crawl someone else page and index it on Google, and later they delete it, hence Google generally give some low score initially, and increase that score with time if the page is still return 200 status with actual information.

So the older page means better ranking, but there is more benefits, if you update it with fresh information. Google generally calculate score for same document page with different algorithm and then combine the sum, like how much older the page is, how much fresh information it has. Here fresh information does not mean only latest post, if you update your old page with fresh information then it will perform better compare to newly created page.

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@Bryan171

Domain age is a ranking factor according to SEO experts. But I have never seen page age being listed as a ranking factor.

If anything, Google often tries to show fresh and new content to its users. It will often rank articles that were written in the past week over articles that were written 4 years ago. This is because Google understands that older articles are often outdated and are no longer as relevant.

Fresh content is more likely to rank over older content.



It may take some time for Google to crawl your page, which could be a reason as to why it ranks better a few weeks after it has been posted. There are a few ways to increase the likelihood for Google to crawl your page.

Ways to help Google crawl your page:


1: Utilize sitemap.xml to tell Google about pages on your website.

2: Increase the number of internal links to the article that you want Google to crawl. If the article is linked from your home page it is more likely that Google will find this article than if the article is linked from far deep within your site

3: Submit the page to Google for indexing. You can do this from the webmaster console. www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url

After Google has crawled your page, it still may take some time for Google to index it in its search results. A lot of its indexing delay can be due to how much trust Google has in your site and your content. Newer and less trustworthy sites will take longer for Google to index its pages than trusted, established sites such as NYTimes which will often be indexed immediately.

You may also be experiencing a traffic boost two to four weeks into posting the article due to Google determining its ranking value based on the signals it has received. If your page has initially received a low amount of traffic, there aren't many signals for Google to determine how beneficial this page will be to its users. Once you have started to receive some traffic then Google can analyze metrics of the article such as "time on page", "bounce rate", "pages per session", etc, as well as its success on social network sharing. If your article performs well in its metrics analysis, then Google will begin sending you more traffic.

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