There is something that has been bugging me for a while, Google penalizes sites that change more than a little at once. It’s hugely frustrating to see your site disappear for months just for updating or adding content. This could be just one page that gets totally changed or an entire site for changing the homepage or adding a substantial amount of content – say > 50% in one go.

I have seen this happen to a wide range of sites, some owned by me and managed by myself and some that are totally unrelated.  There is only one pattern: That’s change and get dropped for three months. It’s totally absurd to penalize legitimate sites for updating their content, I mean what does Google want – a bunch of old content  in it’s index?? (I know this has been the common moan for years)

Google really needs to tweak it’s algo so it realises that a site mostly the same has not been sold or switched for spam. How hard can it be? Example: Site A is still on topic and only 60% has changed, the likelihood is that it’s the same site, not some dodgy spam. These filters seriously need to be relaxed by a great deal in my opinion.

We all know that their are exceptions, if the site is trusted massively, then it’s probably not going to drop – but for most sites, they are not authority sites that have that trust box checked and thus are going to take a long absence from the SERPS.

Matt Cutts: I implore you to review this nano part of the Algo and let sites have more flexibility to update and keep themselves current.