To update or not to update news URLs ?

[yves67890]

We manage a huge daily news website in my small country - keeping this a bit mysterious in case competitors are reading

Our URL structure is www.companyname.com/news/categoryofnews/title-of-article?id=articleid

In this hyperreactive news world, title of articles change frequently (may be ten times a day for the main stories). The question we debate is : should we reflect the modification of the title in the URL or not ?

Example : "Trump says he wants to ban search engines" would have URL http://www.companyname.com/news/entertainment/Trump-says-he-wants-to-ban-search-engines?id=12345678

Later in the day the title becomes "Trump denies he suggested banning search engines". Should the URL be modified to http://www.companyname.com/news/entertainment/Trump-denies-he-suggested-banning-search-engines?id=12345678 (option A) or not (option B) ?

In Google News it makes no difference because of the sitemap, but in Google organic things are different.

At present (option B in place), Google apparently doesn't see that the article has been updated, and shows the initial timestamp which is visually (and presumably SEOwise) not good : our new news looks like old news. Modifiying the URL would solve that issue, but could, may be, create another one : the new URL, being considered a new article, would lose, the acquired weight of the previous one in terms of referrals, social trafic and so on. Or not ? What do you think is the best option ?

Thanks for your expertise,

Yves

[RobertFisher]

Yves,

Great question and I do think you already know the answer. IMO I would not update the URLs because you could end up chasing your tail. If you change the URL are you going to 301 every time you change it? If not, anyone who linked to the article or bookmarked pre change is lost.

Anecdotally, a year or more ago I started noticing on a major sports mag online that starts with S and ends in I they were changing titles regularly. Frankly, I don't have much time for reading sports so I need to get the info and go. As a fan of the Mavericks for instance, I would read an article that was Dirk Sets Record and think great cause I like the big German. Then a day later I would see an article that was Another Record! and when I clicked on it... was the one I had already read the day before. My guess now is that they change their titles like I change my socks. When I saw your question I did a quick test and they are not changing the URLs on the two I found.

I hope this helps you a bit.

Robert

[GlobeRunner]

i would definitely not change the URLs. Once a page is crawled and indexed, you should leave it there--and update that page as necessary. Other sites may link to it (and you may then lose the links or they'll to 404 errors) if you change the URL. You may also have social media links out there to the article that are shared. If someone clicks on it from social media, then it would then go to an old story if you change the URL.

Generally it's better to NOT change the URL of the page unless it's a new story, requiring a new article. If it's the same story, then you should just update the current URL.

[RobertFisher]

Eric, in your last line did you mean to say just update the story? It sounds as if you are saying don't change the URL, update it. Just trying to give Yves clarity.

Best

[yves67890]

Thanks Eric. I probably need to be more precise on one point. Both option A and option B lead to the same page, because the ?id=articleid is the only part of the URL taken into account by the db server. So we are not going to get any 404's. What I worry about is the loss of referencing linked to the original URL wording, if I may say so.

[yves67890]

Thanks Robert. I probably need to be more precise on one point. Both option A and option B lead to the same page, because the ?id=articleid is the only part of the URL taken into account by the db server. So we are not going to get any 404's. What I worry about is the loss of referencing linked to the original URL wording, if I may say so.

[RobertFisher]

By "... loss of referencing," what precisely do you mean? From your question it appeared you were mostly worried about the timestamp issue in web or all search on Google? 
Are you worried you change the article so much that given info would no longer be in it?

From a news perspective, the timestamp is informative and, I believe, important. Is there the ability to add an update to that which would show near the timestamp? So the story is three blind mice arrested for jaywalking today. Then in two days breaking news:  Mouse B freed due to technicality in arrest! Is there a way to have **"Update  2016.04.01" **show in bold at beginning of article so that timestamp seen by searcher is likely ignored?

Best

[yves67890]

I try to balance the pros and cons of updating the URL, given that both point to the same article (in the http://www.companyname.com/news/entertainment/Trump-says-he-wants-to-ban-search-engines?id=12345678 URL, only the articleid is used by the db to fetch the article, all text content before the ?id= is irrelevant), so it's not the issue of losing trafic.

Pro of udating is having a fresher timestamp displayed in google organic. That's for sure.

Con is the fact that google could induce from the fresher timestamp that it's a "new" article and that all its accumulated weight (referrals, social mentions...) would be lost. That's not for sure, and that's why I'm looking for advice.

Best,

Yves