Google Says They Can Still Rank a Page for a Query After Matching Content Is Removed from the Page

John Mueller of Google said Google can still rank a page for a specific keyword, even if you remove that specific phrase or word from your page. John said on Twitter “If we know a text used to be on a page, we might continue to show the page even if the text has been removed.” John gave an example, “if a company changes its name, you’d still want to find the website if you searched for the old name.”

Not really. If we know a text used to be on a page, we might continue to show the page even if the text has been removed. For example, if a company changes its name, you'd still want to find the website if you searched for the old name.

— ? John ? (@JohnMu) November 26, 2020