Versioning
A simple and obvious fix.
Originally shared by John Mueller
Practically dealing with recurring/updated items
“When people search for our event, they find last year’s listing; help!” Whether it’s an event (FooBarConf 2017), a recurring report (FooBar Earnings Q1 2017), an updated product (FooBarPhone 23) or anything else that has a current version and previous versions, this is a really simple way to help make sure that search is able to easily find the current version.
1. Place the current version on a generic, non-versioned URL (/foobarconf)
2. Copy last year’s version onto a versioned URL (/foobarconf/2016)
3. Browse Twitter or Google+
(Technically the last step isn’t necessary, but if someone asks, you can say you’re just following instructions.)
Doing it this way will help the generic URL to gain value over the years, while still allowing the older versions to be accessible if someone explicitly looks for them. Another advantage of this setup is that it’s trivial for folks to find and go to the current version. FWIW we get this wrong at Google, with our own content, from time to time too — it looks simple and obvious, and like many such things, you only notice it when things don’t work as expected.
