Test Summary as of 6/19/2023
Further testing required, but these key points have consistently proven true so far:
- Google gives as tangible rankings improvement to “fresh” content.
- We define tangible as a consistent positive movement of 3-5 spots for the average webpage
- Google is only comparing {what they’re seeing during this crawl} versus {what they have stored in the index}.
- Toggling back and forth between two versions of a page tricks them into thinking it’s a new page every time.
- “Fresh content” needs to be significantly different.
- ChatGPT rewrites are not unique enough to earn this benefit; Google treats them as the same page left unchanged.
- Reordering paragraphs within the same page also fails to earn the freshness benefit.
- The Range “SEO Plugin” outperforms webpages that do not have it, but also fails to earn this benefit when compared side-by-side with these strategies:
- All sentences in the page are reordered at random and split back into paragraphs of similar lengths as prior
- The order of sentences within each paragraph are shuffled into a new order
- Full page rewrite by a human.
3-Month Test: 4/2023-6/2023
| Control: No changes, just the SEO Plugin | 4/5/2023 | 4/21/2023 | 6/15/2023 | 6/19/2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ac repair Merrimack NH | 6 | 8 | 9 | 7 |
| hvac company Merrimack NH | 10 | 9 | 10 | 9 |
| Test 1: Paragraphs reordered throughout page | Start position | After Test | Untouched 2mos | Test Reverted |
| hvac company Derry NH | 13 | 11 | 12 | 13 |
| ac repair in Derry, NH | 16 | 15 | Unchecked | 15 |
| heating repair Derry New Hampshire | 11 | 10 | Unchecked | 14 |
| Test 2: Sentences reorded within paragraphs | Start position | After Test | Untouched 2mos | Test Reverted |
| hvac company Nashua NH | 28 | 24 | 27 | 18 |
| ac repair Nashua NH | 21 | 17 | 15 | 14 |
| heating repair Nashua NH | 13 | 16 | 16 | 13 & 14 |
| Test 3: Sentences reorded across entire page | Start position | After Test | Untouched 2mos | Test Reverted |
| ac repair Manchester NH | 9 | 8 | 18 | 14 |
| hvac company Manchester NH | 12 | 12 | 28 | 22 |
| heating repair Manchester New Hampshire | 8 | 6 | 20 | 15 |
4/5/2023
SEO & Web pages reindexed, no major movement on either.
| Keyword | URI | 3/27/2023 | 4/3/2023 | 4/5/2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| buffalo web design companies | /services/websites/ | 23 | 11 | 10 |
| web design agency buffalo ny | /services/websites/ | 13 | 2 (GBP), 5 | 2 (GBP), 5 |
| seo company buffalo ny | /services/search/ | 1 (GBP), 6 | 1 (GBP), 6 | |
| buffalo ny seo companies | /services/search/ | 1 (GBP), 21 | 1 (GBP), 19 |
Assumptions at this point:
- “Fresh content” needs to be significantly different, more than what ChatGPT provides when asked to “rewrite.”
- Google is only comparing {what they’re seeing during this crawl} versus {what they have stored in the index}. Toggling back and forth between two versions of a page tricks them into thinking it’s a new page every time.
Next step is to figure out: How much has to change for that “freshness” bump? 100% new content after a stagnant period of time helps a ton, but slight edits don’t seem to make any difference. Going to test just reordering the same sentences & reordering the same paragraphs like we do inside heading tags. Either of those could be automated at scale… if the page has to actually be unique we might only be able to realistically do that on the homepage by writing two different versions.
Launched the following tests and requested crawls:
Third Test – Original Content with Paragraphs in New Order (including headings above them)
Target Page: https://choosesanford.com/areas-served/derry-nh/
Date of last significant content update: 6 Months Ago
Elements already spinning via SEO plugin: None – Manually overridden
| Keyword | URI | 4/5/2023 | URI | After Index |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| hvac company Derry NH | /areas-served/derry-nh/ | 13 | ||
| ac repair in Derry, NH | /areas-served/derry-nh/ | 16 | ||
| heating repair Derry New Hampshire | /areas-served/derry-nh/ | 11 |
Fourth Test – Original Content with Each Paragraph’s Sentences in New Order (placed within same paragraph)
Target Page: https://choosesanford.com/areas-served/nashua-nh/
Date of last significant content update: 2 Years Ago
Elements already spinning via SEO plugin: ALL – Title, H1, H2, Shortcode H2, Meta, H3
| Keyword | URI | 4/5/2023 | URI | After Index |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ac repair Nashua NH | /air-conditioning-repair/ | 21 | ||
| hvac company Nashua NH | / | 28 | ||
| heating repair Nashua NH | /areas-served/nashua-nh/ | 13 |
Fifth Test – Original Content with Entire Page’s Sentences in New Order (placed in random paragraphs)
Target Page: https://choosesanford.com/areas-served/manchester-nh/
Date of last significant content update: 2 Years Ago
Elements already spinning via SEO plugin: ALL – Title, H1, H2, Shortcode H2, Meta, H3
| Keyword | URI | 4/5/2023 | URI | After Index |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ac repair Manchester NH | /areas-served/manchester-nh/ | 9 | ||
| hvac company Manchester NH | /areas-served/manchester-nh/ | 12 | ||
| heating repair Manchester New Hampshire | /areas-served/manchester-nh/ | 8 |
Control – Requested New Crawl Without Making Changes
Target Page: https://choosesanford.com/areas-served/merrimack-nh/
Date of last significant content update: 2 Years Ago
Elements already spinning via SEO plugin: ALL – Title, H1, H2, Shortcode H2, Meta, H3
| Keyword | URI | 4/5/2023 | URI | After Index |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ac repair Merrimack NH | /areas-served/merrimack-nh/ | 6 | ||
| hvac company Merrimack NH | / | 10 | ||
| Same as Above | /areas-served/merrimack-nh/ | 11 |
4/3/2023
Huge rank increases! Quality of content was indisputably weaker so the new theory is that freshness is the large factor. Page hadn’t been meaningfully updated in 3 years.
| Keyword | URI | 3/27/2023 | 4/3/2023 |
|---|---|---|---|
| buffalo web design companies | /services/websites/ | 23 | 11 |
| web design agency buffalo ny | /services/websites/ | 13 | 2 (GBP), 5 |
Testing by reverting page to original content and requesting a fresh crawl. Will Google consider the old content “new” because it’s different than previous crawl? They can’t possibly retain and compare against older versions…?
Second Test – ChatGPT “Rewrite” of Original Content
Running second test on SEO page: Asked ChatGPT to rewrite each paragraph on the page but carried over same internal links and headings. Expecting to see improved rankings due to freshness even though it’s basically the same content restated in a slightly different way.
3/27/2023
First Test – Totally Original Content from ChatGPT
Theory is that ChatGPT content will be lower quality and partially duplicate so rankings will drop.
Tested on https://rangemarketing.com/services/websites/ by replacing all paragraph content (not headings) with AI-generated content of the same word count. Submitted to Search Console for a crawl.