tkrunning

Shhh... ;)

IMO, it's not too surprising that they tried to be a bit more writer friendly initially (to attract more quality writers and larger publications). I guess it no longer fit with their new business objectives, which is why they quietly removed it this fall.

Good point! I'll update it :)

I just threw the site together in a few minutes before publishing the post (experimenting with Gatbsy), so literally just added a max-width and changed the font styles.

This is definitely true. What I'm referring to in the article is cases when you've done a proper update of the article to make sure it's up to date, added new information, etc.

I actually hope Google will start comparing versions of articles before/after date updates, and penalize those that update the date without updating the content.

I'm not surprised and as I say in the article "A heads-up would have been nice, but still, that's their prerogative."

I do understand why they would want to move in the direction they are, but I also think authors in particular should be aware of the trends and make choices that will benefit them, rather than Medium, in the long run.

What's a bit sneaky here is that they have been selling authors on the fact that they own the content, and the fact that you can move it elsewhere later (including updating canonical links). It's a bit like a SaaS offering an export function, but after you put a lot of your data there they quietly remove it. For bloggers, you can't claim to give them proper data portability without a way of updating the canonical links.

It's not only a problem with the search engines' own rankings, it's also that people are less likely to click an older article on the SERP.

It depends on the content and the type of updates you make.

As long as I do a significant update to an article, and make sure it's generally up to date and still entirely relevant, then I'll update the date to match.

When people look at the dates (in SERP) they generally want to know if the article is still relevant or if they are likely to find outdated information there. At least that's how I think.

Automatically updating dates without actually revising the content on the other hand... That's not something I'd want to endorse.

I don't think Medium is able to plug the hole that easily, but they might tell me to stop doing it or plug the hole just for me. I don't believe I'm violating their ToS, but you never know how they would interpret it.

I don't believe I'm violating their ToS, but you never know how they would interpret it. That's why I'm not sharing it publicly. But feel free to email me on mediumtrick at nomad dot email.

Luckily, it's no longer 2004, so no one in their right mind would start out blogging there ;)

I personally prefer Jekyll or Gatsby on GH Pages or, even better, Netlify. But if you're less technically inclined, WordPress.com is fine as long as you get a custom domain.

Typically, less than 5% of an article's traffic has been coming from Medium for me (that's true for unpopular articles as well as more popular ones with more than a quarter million views).

So don't give the "visibility argument" too much weight.

Ha, that's funny indeed!

I emailed with Josh a few times (regarding GDPR stuff) and he seems like a great guy!