在最新一期的“Search Off The Record”播客中，谷歌搜索關系團隊成員 John Mueller 和 Lizzi Sassman 深入探討了如何應對網站“內容衰減”問題。

隨著時間的推移，過時的內容是所有網站都會面臨的一個自然問題，谷歌已經制定了一些策略，而不僅僅是刪除舊網頁。

雖然刪除陳舊內容有時是必要的，但谷歌建議采取一種有意的、針對特定格式的方法來解決內容衰減問題。

存檔指南與過渡指南

谷歌建議不要立即刪除過時的內容，如引用停產產品或服務的材料。

Sassman 解釋說，過早刪除內容可能會讓讀者感到困惑，導致糟糕的閱讀體驗：

“So, if I’m trying to find out like what happened, I almost need that first thing to know. Like, “What happened to you?” And, otherwise, it feels almost like an error. Like, “Did I click a wrong link or they redirect to the wrong thing?””

Sassman 說，在廢棄期提供過渡性的“說明”頁面可以避免混淆。

臨時過渡指南會告知讀者過時的內容，同時引導他們使用更新的資源。

Sassman 繼續說道：

“That could be like an intermediary step where maybe you don’t do that forever, but you do it during the transition period where, for like six months, you have them go funnel them to the explanation, and then after that, all right, call it a day. Like enough people know about it. Enough time has passed. We can just redirect right to the thing and people aren’t as confused anymore.”

何時更新內容？何時撰寫新內容

對于提供權威概述的參考指南和內容，Google 建議更新信息以保持準確性和相關性。

不過，出于存檔目的，重大更新可能需要創建新作品，而不是編輯原作品。

Sassman 解釋說：

“I still want to retain the original piece of content as it was, in case we need to look back or refer to it, and to change it or rehabilitate it into a new thing would almost be worth republishing as a new blog post if we had that much additional things to say about it.”

刪除可能有害的內容

如果過期信息可能有害，谷歌建議刪除網頁。

Sassman 說，她是在決定如何處理涉及過時結構化數據的指南時得出這一結論的：

“I think something that we deleted recently was the “How to Structure Data” documentation page, which I thought we should just get rid of it… it almost felt like that’s going to be more confusing to leave it up for a period of time.

And actually it would be negative if people are still adding markup, thinking they’re going to get something. So what we ended up doing was just delete the page and redirect to the changelog entry so that, if people clicked “How To Structure Data” still, if there was a link somewhere, they could still find out what happened to that feature.”

內部審計流程

為了保持內容的時效性，Google 建議實施一套系統來審核老化的內容，并將其標記出來以供審查。

Sassman 說，她為在規定時間內未被檢查的頁面設置了自動警報：

“Oh, so we have a little robot to come and remind us, “Hey, you should come investigate this documentation page. It’s been x amount of time. Please come and look at it again to make sure that all of your links are still up to date, that it’s still fresh.””

背景是關鍵

谷歌處理內容衰減的技巧主要是了解過時資料的來龍去脈。

您要防止訪問者在不清楚的情況下偶然發現過時的頁面。

谷歌推薦的其他策略包括：

醒目的橫幅或告示，說明頁面的過時性質

列出原始出版日期

提供內嵌注釋，解釋舊版參考資料或屏幕截圖可能過時的原因

如何幫助您

遵循谷歌的建議來解決內容衰減問題，可以讓您在多個方面受益：

改善用戶體驗：通過提供清晰的解釋、過渡指南和重定向，可以確保訪問者不會遇到混亂或中斷的頁面。

維護信任和信譽：刪除可能有害或不準確的內容并及時更新信息，表明您致力于提供可靠和值得信賴的資源。

更好的搜索引擎優化: 定期審核和更新網頁可以提高網站的搜索排名和知名度。

存檔目的: 通過創建新內容而不是編輯舊內容，您可以保留網站演變的歷史記錄。

簡化內容管理: 實施內部審計流程可以更容易地識別和處理過時或有問題的頁面。

通過積極主動地解決內容衰減問題，您可以使自己的網站成為有價值的資源，提高搜索引擎優化，并保持內容庫的有序性。