Query Deserve Freshness (QDF) As a Ranking Signal – Matt Cutts Video

A new webmaster video about QDF or Query Deserve Freshness released by Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s web-spam team on October 1, 2012.

This video was a response to a question asked by a webmaster on Google Moderator Page. Few weeks back Matt Cutts had ran a campaign for webmasters to ask questions for his upcoming video series.

Below is the question asked by Ivan from Canada:

Google has expressed in the past that frequently updated pages get a boost in rankings (QDF), that seems to favor blogs and news sites over company sites, which have less reason to be updated often. How important of a signal is “freshness” ?

Google uses more than 200 signals to rank pages in SERPs. And, QDF is one of them.

Since the introduction of QDF as a ranking signal, webmasters around the world have been busy updating their websites and blogs to take advantage of that signal for higher ranking. News sites and blog owners were thinking themselves as a luckier lot, as content freshness is their daily activity.

But, what about company blog? Which are almost static! Are they also falling under QDF for higher ranking in search engines?

Matt’s View:

Actually, people perform 3 types of search engine queries, like (1) Navigational query  (2) Informational query  (3) Transactional query. Navigational queries are like searching for known websites or companies, e.g., IBM, Samsung, The Telegraph etc. Transactional query is like online shopping etc. Informational query relates to news sites, where lots of newer developments happen everyday.

If your site is a news site, then QDF matters a lot. And, you should update your content regularly with newer developments. Suppose you are broadcasting about an earthquake. You should update about the latest and fresh news as and when happens to rank higher in search engines.

But, if you have a company site, then you shouldn’t worry about freshness or QDF. Instead you should focus on evergreen contents that lasts and stands the test of time.

To make your company site fresh, you shouldn’t change the by-line, date or few lines of previous articles everyday. There is no need for these types of practice. If the content written for log-term (evergreen), then Google never seeks freshness factor (QDF) to rank it higher.

Checkout the whole video below…

If you have something to say or add about QDF (Query Deserve Freshness), then add it in the comments below.