Danny Sullivan, Google’s Search Liaison, posted a PSA on Twitter that you should not delete old content from your site because you think Google Search doesn’t like old content. He said it is not true, Google Search can find older content to be helpful. So don’t delete helpful old content.

Danny Sullivan wrote, “Are you deleting content from your site because you somehow believe Google doesn’t like “old” content? That’s not a thing! Our guidance doesn’t encourage this. Older content can still be helpful, too.”

He then posted a link to the official helpful content documentation on Google Search.

This should not surprise anyone, Google has been saying this for years. Here are some older stories I wrote about this topic:

Google Advice On Old Content On News Sites: Remove, Noindex Or Leave It
Google: Don’t Remove Old News From Your News Site For SEO Reasons
Google: Don’t Just Blindly Delete Old Pages
Googlers Disagrees About Removing vs Improving Content For Google Ranking Benefit
Google: Old Content On New Domains Is Okay
Google: Panda Victims Don’t Necessarily Need To Delete Old Blog Posts
Google: We Don’t Recommend You Remove Content To Fix Panda Issues
Google: Pruning Content Never Should Have Worked For Panda
Google Retake: Improving Content & Pruning Content Are Both Valid Strategies

Here is that tweet:

Here is the follow up:

If you are wondering why Danny Sullivan tweeted this in the first place, read CNET Deletes Thousands of Old Articles to Game Google Search at Gizmodo.

John Mueller also posted a number of responses on this on Mastodon – click to those threads to see the context but here is a screenshot:

And more from Danny Sullivan on this topic on August 14th on Twitter:

Forum discussion at Twitter.