Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Does Google use dateModified or date Published in its SERPs?
-
I was curious as to the prioritization of dateCreated / datePublished and dateModified in our microdata and how it affects google search results. I have read some entries online that say Google prioritizes dateModified in SERPs, but others that claim they prioritize datePublished or dateCreated. Do you know (or could you point me to some resources) as to whether Google uses dateModified or date Published in its SERPs? Thanks!
-
Hello Claire,
From what I have observed Google seems to give a boost to fresh content, or even re-freshed content. I have seen this effect in the following situations:
- When updating the publish date on the page- When updating the last-mod date in the sitemap
- When refreshing a page WITHOUT updating the publish date (though I don't know if the dateModified tag was updated.)
As for empirical data, none that anyone is willing to share publicly. But this is a real effect that has been seen over and over again by myself, and several people I trust. Take it for what it's worth, but going back through old content and looking for ways to improve it, bring it up-to-date, and ensuring the last-mod tag in the sitemap gets updated is a very good use of your time as a marketer.
-
From what I observed, it seems to be the datePublished. Example is this page http://www.grimoires.de/buch/1/. You see "Diese Rezension wurde veröffentlicht am 31.12.2002 und zuletzt geändert am 16.05.2015." (with appropriate schema.org data) below the writer info in the main part. This info is not cheated or manipulated in any way, also used in the sitemap and accurate (it takes the unix time stamp of the time of creation/modification). In a SERP, 31.12.2002 appears. Same for another page that had the content (text) extended.
What might influence it: changes in 2015 were rather minimal - the meta description only, if I remember correctly. I am not sure, if the extent of a change might push google towards displaying the dateModified. It would seem reasonable to me to expect a "change threshold" but in the end I simply don't know. Anybody with hard empiric data?
Regards,
Nico
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
A page will not be indexed if published without linking from anywhere?
Hi all, I have noticed one page from our competitors' website which has been hardly linked from one internal page. I just would like to know if the page not linked anywhere get indexed by Google or not? Will it be found by Google? What if a page not linked internally but go some backlinks from other websites? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google & Tabbed Content
Hi I wondered if anyone had a case study or more info on how Google treats content under tabs? We have an ecommerce site & I know it is common to put product content under tabs, but will Google ignore this? Becky
Algorithm Updates | | BeckyKey1 -
Google Index
Hi all, I just submit my url and linked pages along with xml map to index. How long does it take google to index my new pages?
Algorithm Updates | | businessowner0 -
Winning The New SERP Battle
I run a niche website (www.picnic-basket.com) that is approaching 10 years old. I have consistently added new content, performed redesigns, etc and WAS rewarded with a #1 placement on Google for my main keyword phrase for quite a long time. All our links are natural, no link-farms and I don't do exchanges either. I blog, write articles about our niche, have free cookbooks, delicious recipes and are always finding cool new products. FB & Twitter are also maintained. After Panda I'm now below the fold with amazon.com, bedbathandbeyond.com, worldmarket.com, overstock.com and brookstone.com all above me. These sites don't have anything to do with my niche other than just selling some items. ROI is horrible for me with PPC on this keyword phrase. I'm sure Googles' revenue has increased quite a bit in this category because users only see relevant websites up in the paid area. Through years of hard work I was finally able to beat my old niche competitors but I'm left wondering, How do I beat the "Big Boys"? Any advice for someone like me?
Algorithm Updates | | sunriseb0 -
Lost 50% google traffic in one day - panic?
Hi girls + guys, a site of us were hit by a google update or a google penalty. We have lost 50% google traffic in one day (25th april, 2012). (Total visitors in average per day: 6k, yesterday: 3k) It's a german website, so I think google.de (germany) was updated. Our rankings in google.at (austria) are also affected, but it's not that bad as in google.de. We have not done any specific on page seo activities in the last two months. GWT doesn't have any message for us (no critical errors). After my first analyse I can say this: google has indexed 17k pages (thats fine) we are on 1st place with our domain name the last three days, the google traffic went up (+20%), but yesterday it was 50% below average (so -70%) last week we had a very good day, we had twice the traffic than normal, but this calmed down the following days we have lost number no. 1 places at two high traffic keywords. We had these no 1 rankings for years. We have been outranked by two of our competitors, but they have not done any onpage changes. We have lost a lot of positions at a lot of keywords. But there are also keywords which moved up. We have good content, useres are visiting 5 pages in average. No virus, no hacker (no hidden cloaking page) it's an old domain (2002) Lot of (good) inbound links Lot's of likes, g+. Good twitter activty. So, all in all I think it's more likely a ranking algo change than a penalty (a penalty for what reason?) My specific question(s): Is there any "check list" which could help me to find out the reason for this mess? What is the best strategy to regain the positions? New HTML code? New On page seo? (seomoz grades most of our important pages an A) Any idea would be appreciated! Best wishes,
Algorithm Updates | | GeorgFranz
Georg.1 -
Stop google indexing CDN pages
Just when I thought I'd seen it all, google hits me with another nasty surprise! I have a CDN to deliver images, js and css to visitors around the world. I have no links to static HTML pages on the site, as far as I can tell, but someone else may have - perhaps a scraper site? Google has decided the static pages they were able to access through the CDN have more value than my real pages, and they seem to be slowly replacing my pages in the index with the static pages. Anyone got an idea on how to stop that? Obviously, I have no access to the static area, because it is in the CDN, so there is no way I know of that I can have a robots file there. It could be that I have to trash the CDN and change it to only allow the image directory, and maybe set up a separate CDN subdomain for content that only contains the JS and CSS? Have you seen this problem and beat it? (Of course the next thing is Roger might look at google results and start crawling them too, LOL) P.S. The reason I am not asking this question in the google forums is that others have asked this question many times and nobody at google has bothered to answer, over the past 5 months, and nobody who did try, gave an answer that was remotely useful. So I'm not really hopeful of anyone here having a solution either, but I expect this is my best bet because you guys are always willing to try.
Algorithm Updates | | loopyal0 -
Sitelink Disappeared from SERPs
Hi everyone, Something weird has happened to one of our client's site. First of all I want to explain that the client's name is something like a Person Name plus another generic keyword, for example Truxy Lawyers. Before when you searched for the brand keyword (in my example Truxy), Google would show in the SERPs the client's site as first result with six sitelinks below. Now when searching for the same branded keyword (for example Truxy), Google doesn't show the sitelink anymore, but the first result is the home page and the second and third results are subdomain pages. Does anybody know why Google all of the sudden decided to stop showing the site link? Things get more weird when you search the complete brand name "Truxy Lawers" for example, because in this case Google shows the site link. Does anybody know what has caused this? Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | Aviatech0 -
Using Brand Name in Page titles
Is it a good practice to append our brand name at the end of every page title? We have a very strong brand name but it is also long. Right now what we are doing is saying: Product Name | Long brand name here Product Category | Long brand name here Is this the right way to do it or should we just be going with ONLY the product and category names in our page titles? Right now we often exceed the 70 character recommendation limit.
Algorithm Updates | | mlentner1