Comments on: Google News, Stop Making It Advantageous to Change URLs

By: BrentDPayne

BrentDPayne — Wed, 06 May 2009 23:15:31 +0000

So, one solution would be a URL structure like this:

newspaper.com/section/slug-yymmdd-version.html

latimes.com/sports/iraq-20090506-23.html

then the canonical tag would always point to the latest version of the slug

and a drop down menu of the previous versions (yes, huffpo like) could still be available but ‘supposedly’ the canonical tag would direct the pagerank to the most important story for the users

This would be some work for us to implement but I’d fight like hell to get it done quickly

By: john andrews

john andrews — Wed, 06 May 2009 22:44:19 +0000

Perhaps suggestive of a change to Google News down the road, away from a tabloid-like mashup of breaking URLs and towards closer integration with Google’s search engine (and relevance measures). What she suggests builds authority, maintains freshness, and serves search users well… and if fresh enough, represents a “brand safe” approach to Google News (by default, grant some extra weight to known authority domains/urls over breaking urls).

By: Gab

Gab — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:58:45 +0000

“Is it just me or did Google just tell me NOT to do a ‘living entity’?”

It’s just you. All they said is to keep the same content as well as updates to it on a given URL. Eg All TARP info/updates on one URL. Don’t make the Tarp.html page something about Afghanistan.

The GNews thing is different though, and encourages new URLs.

Conclusion: Set up times to consolidate content on a weekly or monthly basis. Check my post at Graywolf’s blog on SEO for blog categories for mroe…

By: Miguel Salcido

Miguel Salcido — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:36:24 +0000

Great post Brent and good thing that you are working in the “paper” industry because you were able to draw the parallel to the Google Webmaster page that contradicts Mayer’s statements! It sounds as if its a topic that is not unilaterally decided on at Google and that maybe Marissa’s liking is for what she says while the person/people in charge of the Webmaster guidelines is not. Either way, I am sure that the good ole 301 works fine for now.

Have you ever seen an instance where a certain number of 301s would trigger a penalty. I have heard at various sources that Google will penalize of they detect too many 301s.