Informing Googlebot for deprecated pages
- by trante
I publish timetables in my website.
For example last year I published Number 2 bus Summer 2013 timetable.
I has pretty good ranking on Google SERPs for number 2 bus timetable
But this year I added a new page with the name "Number 2 bus Summer 2014 timetable".
When users search number 2 bus timetable in Google, they find 2013 timetable in first page of SERPs. But I want them to find 2014 timetable.
Thy can reach 2014 page with the keywords number 2 bus timetable 2014. But most of the users doesn't write year name.
So what's the proper way to say Googlebot that 2013 page is deprecated and newer version is 2014 page ?
I created a link from 2013 page to 2013 page and added a deprecation alert for visitors. But I still see 2013 timetable in first page of Google SERPs.
Of course it is possible to 301 redirect, 2013 page to 2014 page. But I want users to reach old pages to compare the differences between years.
(As you would guess I have many pages like this.)
Edit:
Why I don't put timetables on same page and show different years' timetables with sorting. Because my old pages has good pagerank scores or SERPs. Removing these old page will remove them.
