Dealing with past events

[benseb]

Hi

We have a website which lists both upcoming and past events. Currently everything is indexed by google, with no real issues (usually it finds the most up-to-date events) and we have deprioritised the past events in the sitemap.

Do I need to go one step further and noindex events which are past or just leave it as-is? They dont really hold much value, but sometimes will have a number of incoming links and social media shares pointing to them. We want to keep the page active for visitors, just wondering about google (there's no real link between past events and future either, so difficult to 'point' to newer version of an event)

We have approx 1M 'past' events and growing so its a big change. Also would you keep them in sitemap with lower priority, or just remove them?

EDIT: Just seen a Matt Cutts post from 2014 which indicates than an 'unavailable_after' meta tag might be best?

[Toddfoster]

Hello benseb,

You mention that you have de-prioritized past events in the sitemap. You could go the nofollow route although this is a somewhat clumsy way to go about it.

I think based on what you have described, your best bet is to leave it as is (after moving forward with the hint Matt Cutts dropped) rather than eliminating a load of content which is sending Google positive signals. My guess is that these positive signals overpower any negative signals that might be resulting from aging content.

If everything has been properly indexed and current events are showing up, I wouldn't make any big alterations - why mess with a good thing?

If you begin seeing drastic declines in traffic or user interaction, that might be the time to take a harder stance. For now though, let it be.

Best of luck!

Rob