Google’s recent algorithm changes emphasizes the importance of keeping your site fresh with updated and new content. As a result of the algorithm changes, fewer stale pages are shown to searchers.

As always, you shouldn’t produce content for the sake of content, instead produce meaningful and high quality content that is useful to your target audience.

Here are the changes for the project codename “Freshness” taken directly from Google:

• Improvements to freshness. [launch codename “Abacus”, project codename “Freshness”] We launched an improvement to freshness late last year that was very helpful, but it cost significant machine resources. At the time we decided to roll out the change only for news-related traffic. This month we rolled it out for all queries.

• More precise detection of old pages. [launch codename “oldn23″, project codename “Freshness”] This change improves detection of stale pages in our index by relying on more relevant signals. As a result, fewer stale pages are shown to users.

Here is a complete list of the recent algorithm changes.