Google Patent Implications: updated outbound link anchor tag text

Why does Google want to see updated outbound link anchor tag text?

At first glance this patent rule seems somewhat contradictory to Google’s mission of delivering high-quality content.

In their never-ending quest for quality content, Google implements an anchor tag algorithm that categorizes updated content as good and stale content as bad.

At first this seems wrong, as so eloquently pointed out by riottech (Google recent patent historical data and page rankings).

It will be interesting to see how Google handles “stale” documents. It seems like a page not having recently updated content will not always mean that it is not a good source of information. Many encyclopedia articles and reference pages should not change often, I would think. Does fresh content always mean better content?

I suppose that Google’s reasoning is like this: “In 1491 the world was flat. In 1492, not so much.”

In other words, what are the chances that an updated document is less accurate than an older one? Let’s assume that document updates imply higher document accuracy.

Updated inbound link anchor text indicates a probable document correction.