Date In Search Results

[HTMLBasicTutor]

We have discussed whether one should include the date of you article or not before. If you decided that trying to trick Google was the right way to make your article or blog post look more recent that is a bad idea:

Often you will see dates in the search results snippets when blog or news related content shows up in the organic Google search results. Did you know you can lose the ability to show those date bylines if you try to trick Google by faking the date to make it look more recent that the actual date/time it was published?...

...Google's Gary Illyes said at State of Search that these dates are good for search, that they make it more useful for searchers when they are looking for content. So if you abuse the date and fake it, Google can take away the ability for a site to show it...

Google Date Bylines In Search Results Snippets Penalty

[vaguar]

Why does one need to fake that date? If I understand correctly, that date reflects when the content was most recently updated. Some bare minimum update of the content should update the date counter anyway. No need to fake or fool anyone.

[joserafael]

Many times I look for information on a specific date and the same google changes the date. Has anyone managed to correct this?

[BatGuy]

You do realize that Google knows when your site was updated?

[HTMLBasicTutor]

Originally Posted by PeterGenesis

After Google Panda updates , one thing which is most common about blogs penalised by Panda is, they are showing dates in SERP description. And, this is mostly happened to old blogs , who are publishing from years. One simple reason for the same is, old dates in blog post decreased down the CTR of the post.For example, if you search for anything like "WordPress plugins for SEO", and you see results dated with 2008, 2010, and 2015. You are more likely to ignore the first two, and click on the results to the latest date. In the similar scenario, if an article is there without any date, it will get the benefit of doubt and hence more click compare to article dated 2008 & 2010. This is no rocket-science, and you can clearly notice this from your search pattern.

I disagree with your findings.

Recently I did some searching for a shopping cart. Not all the old articles had dates shown and depending how I wording my search some really old articles were at the top of the results.

[ScriptMan]

Originally Posted by PeterGenesis

You are more likely to ignore the first two, and click on the results to the latest date. In the similar scenario, if an article is there without any date, it will get the benefit of doubt and hence more click compare to article dated 2008 & 2010. This is no rocket-science, and you can clearly notice this from your search pattern.

There are some topics where date might be a factor but I disagree with you, Google or anyone else that says newer dates should always be given a higher rating.

I write articles about home building. Stud placement hasn't changed in 50 years. An article from 50 years ago is as valid as it needs to be. Some things and methods have changed mostly not for the better so the older article is still more valuable to a person who really gives a damn and isn't just interested in collecting a check.

An honestly a few things have improved in the newer versions.

[pavani25]

Adding a date to your post definitely gives good user experience to your audience. From the perspective of readers, I would give priority to read an article which was published recently which feels like very fresh content for me. If you are not keep on adding latest posts to your website then dates remain old. So there will be huge drop in the traffic. Even Google is giving priority for latest authentic content which has more popularity from the audience perspective.

[IanRenton]

My experience shows that google sometimes gives priority to fresh content and sometimes to old content. I guess the algorithm is a bit more complicated than fresh content always wins

[shaileshshakya]

When HARSH AGRAWAL added the dates back to his blog posts, blog traffic dropped by almost 40%.On average, he gets 10,000 page views every day (25K daily in June 2015), but after adding the dates, page views dropped to an all-time low of 5,757.

see the study : https://www.shoutmeloud.com/effect-o...ase-study.html