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Prescience: Google Searches when Time is an Factor...

by David McKee
10 replies
I wanted to make a point about how Google searches can be very irrelevant despite all of the various parameters they use to measure "goodness" of content.

I was searching for the answer to "Who makes the best Hard Drives" - I found lots of articles, unfortunately they were for the years 2007, 2005, etc.

I don't care about who makes the best hard drives in 2007. This is 2011 - I want to know who makes the best now.

And that brings up an interesting concept that would, I think, be hard to measure. I call this parameter "prescience" - that ability to know when something is relevant, and when it no longer is. This may differ somewhat from the strict definition of the word "prescience", however I think it is apt in this case.

Some content is always inherently "good", while others is good when it arrives, and then gets stale.

Unfortunately, stale, stinky old content, if it still has good "SEO" behind it, can still rank well in the SERPS.

This got me to thinking that I need to review some of my old content and make sure it is not like that fuzzy green unidentified object in the back of the fridge. and perhaps "freshen" or throw out some of that stuff.

What do you think?

-DTM
#factor #google #prescience #searches #time
  • Profile picture of the author Vimal Gobin
    Yes. This "loophole" makes you think. If you think you already have a healthy number of posts, it may be time to stop writing new content and to try to give your old content more exposure in the search engines (building backlinks). This especially holds if you are in an "evergreen niche", so even if last year's content is ranking #1, you know that it still carries the same value it did when it was first written. Time to build some links to those old posts!
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
    Banned
    I've searched for quite a few terms and wanted the most up to date info and the first page was dominated with results from 2002 - 2006. That is completely useless results for me. Things change and information changes. Sometimes when I search, I'll put the search term in and then put 2011 to try to force recent pages. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not.
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    • Profile picture of the author David McKee
      Originally Posted by sbucciarel View Post

      I've searched for quite a few terms and wanted the most up to date info and the first page was dominated with results from 2002 - 2006. That is completely useless results for me. Things change and information changes. Sometimes when I search, I'll put the search term in and then put 2011 to try to force recent pages. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not.
      That is basically what I do as well - it seems like this would be an important parameter for the search engines. How much useless content could be offloaded before a search even began if there was some real way to determine the time-domain goodness of a result.

      Anyway, if we get frustrated looking for things like this, then so do some of our customers. That is the real value of Prescience.

      -DTM
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    • Profile picture of the author butters
      Originally Posted by sbucciarel View Post

      I've searched for quite a few terms and wanted the most up to date info and the first page was dominated with results from 2002 - 2006. That is completely useless results for me. Things change and information changes. Sometimes when I search, I'll put the search term in and then put 2011 to try to force recent pages. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not.
      No need to put 2011, you may know it or not but I thought I'd drop it in here for you and others . When searching for something, just change "any time" on the left hand side of google to the last year, 6 months, month etc... to what ever suits your needs . This lets you find the current webpages which have been indexed with in the desired time paramiter.
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      • Profile picture of the author Amitywill
        You know you can search for more recent content quite easily, it's quite handy!

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  • Profile picture of the author WebPen
    Wow I wasn't aware of that little trick with changing it in Google- thanks!
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  • Profile picture of the author David McKee
    That is cool and helps. Thanks!
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    • Profile picture of the author butters
      Originally Posted by David McKee View Post

      That is cool and helps. Thanks!
      Glad I could help and thanks amitywill for the picture to help show it
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  • Profile picture of the author ColinChia
    Hey David,

    I always find that searching on Google has it's own language...

    You see if I was to search for your term "who makes the best hard drives" I would put instead "best hard drives" or "best hard drive manufacturers" and when I did the latter - there was even a prompt for "best hard drive manufacturers 2011".

    So just like keyword research we look for the best keywords people are targeting, we are also need to use this mentality when we search.

    It's what me and friends like to "Caveman Language" where you only put in whats really important. Because the way Google works is that they bring up search terms in regards to the words you choose rather than the phrases you use.

    So it's not what you search - it's how you search it.

    Hope this helps,

    Colin
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  • Profile picture of the author Duncan Munene
    mmh points to ponder!!
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