Member Avatar for MktgRob

In my reading I have seen some articles on Page Age and Link Age and for the most part the assessment is that older pages and older links will do better in page rankings because of their age. But they also state that at a certain point older becomes too old and the newer sites will do better in the page ranks and engines. Can anyone say what are some of the determining factors of the transition from well-aged to too old?

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Good question from and useful experiences from , , and . The core point: age is a ranking signal, not a guarantee. A long-lived page or link can help when it still answers searcher intent and shows recent maintenance; it becomes a liability when facts, intent or link quality have drifted and users stop engaging with it.

Key factors that cause the "too old" transition are predictable:

  • Query intent: news and trends favor recent content; evergreen queries do not.
  • Content accuracy and coverage: outdated facts or missing new developments reduce relevance.
  • Backlink health: lost, low-quality or redirected links weaken authority over time.
  • On-site signals: last-modified, sitemaps, canonical use and crawlability affect how updates are seen.
  • User engagement: drops in CTR, dwell time or conversions tell search engines the page no longer satisfies users.

Practical checklist to act on this thread's points:

  • Run a content audit (GSC, Analytics, crawl tool) and tag time-sensitive pages.
  • Prioritize substantive updates (new examples, updated data, author notes) rather than cosmetic edits.
  • Push updates: update dateModified/datePublished in structured data, refresh sitemap lastmod, use URL Inspection to request reindexing.
  • Decide: update and consolidate if the topic is stable; create a new URL if the topic or intent has materially changed.
  • Reclaim lost links (outreach), fix redirect chains and remove thin or irrelevant internal pages.

Track results (position, impressions, CTR, organic sessions) after changes and use controlled experiments when practical. For how Google treats recency and relevance at a high level, see Google’s overview of how search works: How Search works — Google

Example JSON-LD for signaling an update:

{
  "@context":"https://schema.org",
  "@type":"Article",
  "headline":"Example",
  "datePublished":"2018-05-20",
  "dateModified":"2025-11-01"
}

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Member Avatar for InsightsDigital

I actually research on this particular SEO topic for a client some time ago and discovered that:
1. Page and Link Age are important factors
2. But constant updates and content refresh needs to be added to the website to keep the website "fresh". It defintitely will entice the spiders to crawl the website more often.

I hope this helps.

Member Avatar for phoenix06007

that is true, SE used that as an important factor.

Member Avatar for bobchrist

As far as you keep your site updated with fresh content and go on adding value it would be not considered too old.

Member Avatar for ChiefLee

My experience is that google likes both old links and new links. We've lost some of our old links, and it's hurt our SERPs, even though we've also been adding new links in there place.

Member Avatar for MktgRob

My experience is that google likes both old links and new links. We've lost some of our old links, and it's hurt our SERPs, even though we've also been adding new links in there place.

I think that someone is going to have to do some in depth analysis on each search engine to determine what the age range should be before the links go from being treated like fine wine to being treated like stale bread. There has to be some sort of statistical equation to pim down the boundaries.

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