My website has not been updated in five years. Does that matter?

A five-year-old website matters when the hours, the fee or the number on the page are no longer true, or when the files have grown too heavy to open on a mid range phone. Five years on the calendar is not, by itself, a reason to rebuild. A dental clinic in Green Park with last year’s Sunday still on the page is the hole. A restaurant in Khan Market whose menu file still opens and still matches the board may keep the page.

I will not sell you a refresh because a year rolled over. I will ask you to open the URL as a stranger would.

What five years usually did to the page

The hours drifted. Someone changed the Sunday shut, and the site never heard. The fee on the implant line is from a price list you no longer use. The phone in the footer rings a SIM you cancelled. Those are facts the stranger will treat as the shop.

The files grew. A theme kept adding plugins. A photographer dumped uncompressed room shots. Why the website is slow on mobile is the pile I measured on clinic pages: 8.8s, 2.4 MB, PageSpeed 54 in the middle of that set. People leave after three seconds. I will not paste that median onto a restaurant I have not timed. Weigh your own URL.

The builder login sat with a person who left. Hidden costs of a business website is the renewal and the person who can still open the host. What happens if I do nothing is the week if you leave both the page and the listing alone.

What five years did not automatically break

A plain page that still states the door, the hours and a way to write can still do the Thursday night job. Usually under two weeks is the build time for a new website on pricing, floor Rs 30,000. That floor is not a tax you owe because the footer says 2021.

I will not tell you Google punishes a page for being five years old. I have no such figure, and I will not invent one. I will tell you a crawler that meets last year’s Holi hours will repeat last year’s Holi hours.

How to check tonight, without a developer

Open the URL on your own phone, first visit, mobile data.

• Today’s hours. Sunday included.
• A fee or a menu that is this season, not a scan from 2019.
• A number that rings the shop, not a dead SIM.
• The wait. Count to three. If you are still on a spinner, the age of the copy is not the first job.

Then open the Google listing and put the two next to each other. If the listing is true and the page is a museum, the page is the spend. If the listing is the museum, fix the listing first. That edit is free on Google’s own claim and edit pages, and it is not a rebuild.

Honest downside of a rebuild

You will spend Rs 30,000 or more, and you will still have to keep hours true after I leave. A new page that nobody edits becomes the next five year problem.

Honest downside of keeping the old page: a stranger who trusted the old Sunday will not come back to check. I cannot tell you how many. Count the people who asked “are you open Sunday” last week. That count is yours.

What I will not tell you

I will not tell you a redesign of the logo is the job. I will not tell you every restaurant in Delhi NCR must move off WordPress this year. I will not invent a “freshness score”.

What to bring if you still want a second read

The live URL, the listing URL, and one note: which of hours, fees, number, wait already failed on your phone.

Age on the footer is a clue, not a quote.

Write that note and send it. From those four ticks I will say keep the page, change the hours yourself, or name a rebuild figure. I will not start from the year in the footer.