One hub page linking to 18 new posts on day one vs. drip-feeding: a split test

One hub page linking to 18 new posts on day one vs. drip-feeding: a split test

Question: does pushing internal links to new content all at once help indexing/ranking versus spreading them over weeks?

What was done: 36 new articles split into two arms of 18. Arm A was linked from a prominent hub on publish day. Arm B sat with only a sitemap entry for three weeks, then got identical hub links. Same author, same topic depth, randomized assignment.

Outcome: Arm A reached first indexation in a median of 2 days; Arm B in 9 days. At week 6 (after Arm B finally got links), the two arms' average positions converged to within 0.7 of each other. So the internal links sped up discovery sharply but didn't confer a lasting rank advantage.

Caveat: 18-per-arm is small, and "convergence" was measured at one snapshot. But the randomized assignment makes the indexation-speed finding unusually clean for this kind of test.

Method note: randomized 2-arm split on one site, index-status logging + position tracking, 6 weeks.

Confidence: medium-to-high for indexation speed; medium for the no-lasting-rank conclusion.