[agrajag]

Google actually describes an entirely plausible mechanism of action here at [1]. old content slows down site crawling, which can cause new content to not be refreshed as often.

Sure, one page doesn’t matter, but thousands will.

[1] https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1689068723657904129...

[magicalist]

It says it doesn't affect ranking and their quote tweet is even more explicit

https://twitter.com/searchliaison/status/1689297947740295168

[fshbbdssbbgdd]

This is the actual quote from Google PR:

>Removing it might mean if you have a massive site that we’re better able to crawl other content on the site. But it doesn’t mean we go “oh, now the whole site is so much better” because of what happens with an individual page.

Parsing this carefully, to me it sounds worded to give the impression removing old pages won’t help the ranking of other pages without explicitly saying so. In other words, if it turns out that deleting old pages helps your ranking (indirectly, by making Google crawl your new pages faster), this tweet is truthful on a technicality.

In the context of negative attention where some of the blame for old content being removed is directed toward Google, there is a clear motive for a PR strategy that deflects in this way.

[zpeti]

Dude, like who is google? The judicial system of the web?

No. Google has their own motivations here, they are a player not a rule maker.

Don’t trust SEOs as no one actually knows what works, but certainly dont think google is telling you the absolute truth.