The topic of removing or updating or blocking old content from Google is not new, and we covered it countless times. I saw John Mueller of Google comment about it again, this time on Reddit, saying, it is up to you to decide which of your old content is helpful and useful – it is not up to Google to decide that.

John wrote, “There is no upper / lower word count limit or target,” so it is not about word count and he said this before. “So what’s useful & helpful content is up to you to decide,” John wrote.

Then he took his Google hat off (but is it ever off?) and wrote:

He added:

Personally, I like to keep my old content available and I have really not updated much of my old stuff over the years. It is like a museum for SEO news. 🙂

Here are the previous times we wrote about this topic (at least the ones I want to link to here):

Google: Don’t Delete Older Content, It May Be Helpful ContentGoogle 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

Forum discussion at Reddit.