Updating freesites?

[AndyS]

After reading through the thread about freesites 1.5 it got me thinking about if updating freesites.

As you can't change the pic/movie content and the look of the site once it is listed the only things you can change are those elements around that.

Do you feel updating would be enough of a plus to SE to make it worth doing?

Would updating just a single page of the four be good enough or do you think updating all four would be worth the extra effort?

Would changing say 3 lines of code out of 30 be seen as a genuine update by google?

I would love to hear people's opinions on this.

[Maj. Stress]

I think submit and forget applies here.

[balls_deep]

Originally Posted by Maj. Stress

I think submit and forget applies here.

I agree, our model works as is. Don't risk your submitting status by changing sites.

[tyre71]

You can always link to your hub and than keep your hub updated on a regular basis.

[Simon]

You might want to consider that you could do that with the versions you don't submit to link lists. That is, if you also build versions that are only for search engines, or only for use on your hubs, etc. Those sites could be designed so that some or all of the pages are updated dynamically.

[AndyS]

Thanks for your views everyone.

I do think I made a mistake by putting the word ‘freesite’ up there.

The core of the question what I really wanted to get into was about updated pages, benifits over static pages and what constitutes an updated page for google?

[Useless]

First we'd have to know how Google determines whether or not a page has been updated. Do they compare their cache to the current page, or do they merely look at the date/time of the page on the server? I don't know the answer of that question. If they use page date, then all you'd have to do is re-upload the same page every now and then to trick them. Wouldn't that be nice? Even though I think that free sites (the kind you submit) can be improved upon, I'm not sure that it would be worth the effort to apply updates manually. Preacher and I were discussing this and he mentioned the use of an RSS feed. One could employ one of those RSS2HTML gizmos and simply update content on their own niche-specific feed without having to touch the free site, which would avoid the fear of a handful of link list bots yanking your sites for changes. I wouldn't suggest using sponsor hosted feeds though.

As for big free sites/hubs - you could do the same thing, or put a block of mixed text and image content on a timed rotation. One of the reasons that SEs like real blogs is because of large chunks of text interspersed with a few images and semi-routine updates. Treat any hub the way you would a blog and you're probably on the right track.

As to how much of a change constitutes an update to Google, I wouldn't know. That's more up Halfdeck's alley. My limited information is based on how Google reacts to my pages that I'm constantly tweaking as compared the ones that I haven't touched in quite some time. When I make routine changes, the bot comes buy more often and hits more pages. I get more Google traffic to the pages that get updated, but that may have more to do with the content of those pages and not the fact that they are in a constant state of change. My opinion is that it's due to both the type of content AND that it is ever-evolving.

[bdld]

the odds that google will rank you higher for just one update is so small that i wouldnt waste my time with that. google likes constant updates and slow link building and old sites.

[AndyS]

Thanks for the post useless, the rss thing is exactly what I was thinking about.

The idea is instead of the gallery page 2 bottom link just going to a niche blog with a simple text link it would show the last post on the blog related to the same site (without the post links).

[AndyS]

bdld you mentioned link building that is definatly something when building free sites you cant do but it should be done for the hub at least.

[ronnie]

I don't think you'd risk your submit status if you changed or added text. If you put up more ads or changed/took down pics/video, then yes. As a LL owner, I'd be happy to see sites getting updated. Know I am not the only one.

[AndyS]

Thanks Ronnie that is exactly what I think. I am lookingat giving it a try and see what happens, maybe with just one site/sponsor at first to see the costs and results.