Old knowledge can be dangerous knowledge

July 29, 2011 Google Tips No Comments

Talking to someone recently, they were confused about why their self-tried SEO methods weren’t working.   They had invested time and money, following some advice they found online about how to raise their website in Google.  But they weren’t getting results.

They had typed a particular search phrase into Google, had scanned through a few search results and followed the advice of one website that seemed to give them all the answers they needed.  But they failed to observe one key point:

The date.

The knowledge they were following was from early 2010, which may not seem long ago, but in SEO terms it’s a lifetime.  When the knowledge had originally been created it had some value but fast forward 18 months and it was out of date, but still existed on that website.

End result:  their time, and some of their money, wasted on SEO activities that no longer work.

It got me thinking that there are many people who don’t use Google in the way that’s most beneficial to them – something that’s vitally important when looking for up-to-date information.  OK, that person should, strictly speaking, have seen that the knowledge was old (in Internet terms) and looked for something more up-to-date but perhaps they didn’t know how to.   Google doesn’t always make it blatantly clear how to either so here’s a quick tip for whenever you’re looking for something and you want the more up-to-date information …

From Google, type in the search phrase.  For example, ‘SEO tips’.   For many people there will already be an expanded view of the left-hand column but if not, click on ‘More’ from within that column.  The view you should get will be similar to this:

Within that view you can see an ‘Any time’ section as shown below:

Click on the appropriate time range to get only search results that have been updated since that time.  So, as an example, if looking for ‘SEO tips’ then you may select ‘Past month’ or perhaps ‘Past year’ (although that’s risky for SEO tips that can get outdated so quickly).  You can customise the time range even more than that (e.g. past 3 months).

It’s a great little way of getting search results that will be fully useful to you and helps you to avoid old knowledge becoming dangerous knowledge that has a negative impact on your business.