That reads like an attempt at a refutation that is actually a confirmation:
> The page itself isn’t likely to rank well. Removing it might mean if you have a massive site that we’re better able to crawl other content on the site. But it doesn’t mean we go “oh, now the whole site is so much better” because of what happens with an individual page.
> “Just because Google says that deleting content in isolation doesn’t provide any SEO benefit, this isn’t always true" Which ... isn't what we said. We said that if people are deleting content just because they think old content is somehow bad that's -- again -- not a thing.
To me that reads like it is possible to improve the ranking of new content by deleting old content. The only thing they are refuting is that the age of the deleted content is the reason for the improvement.
Which is a pretty crucial distinction, no? No one would get upset if CNET announced they were deleting clickbait and blogspam.
With articles such as "The Best Home Deals from Urban Outsitters' Fall Forward Sale" currently gracing their front page, I'm wondering how long HN commenters expect to need access to this content.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-dont-delete-older-helpfu...