Dates appear before home page description in the SERPs- HUGE drop in rankings

[GoUp]

We have been on the first page of Google for a number of years for search terms including 'SEO Agency', 'SEO Agency London' etc.

A few months ago we made some changes to the design of the home page (added a blog feed), and made changes to the website sitemap.

Two days ago (two months after last site changes were made) we dropped subsantially in the SERPs for all home page keywords. Where we are found, a date appears before the description in the SERPs, dating February 2012 (which is when we launched the original website). The site has been through a revamp since then, yet it still shows 2012.

This has been followed by a few additional strange things, including the sitelinks that Google is choosing to show (which including author bio pages showing in homepage site links), and googling our brand name no longer brings up sitelinks in the SERPs.

The problem only affects the home page. All other pages are performing as standard.

When Penguin 4.0 came out we saw a noted improvement in our SERP performance, and our backlinks are good and quality, largely from PR efforts. Of course, I would be interested in additional pairs of eyes on the back links to see if anyone thinks that I have missed anything!

We have 3 of our senior SEOs working on trying to figure out what is going on and how to resolve it, but I would be very interested if anyone has any thoughts?

[travis_sharpcommerce]

I'm seeing this same issue on a client site I consult for. The pages have images added through the WYSIWYG as a workaround to add more info. We're using ASP.net which I realize is a legacy platform. I'm betting those dates are coming from the image creation date. Any updates on this issue appreciated.

[emimelker]

Did anyone find a workaround for this? Just realized all my pages are also being affected by it. I really don't want to remove the videos, but looks like I don't have a choice.

[IWTadmin]

If it is an algo update, it means Google is deliberately sinking articles with old datestamps, or conversely favouring articles with new/no datestamps.

Otherwise there's no way to explain why changing the embedded video to a link would instantly* restore rankings.

That does not seem like sensible behaviour. I agree with QDF for new content, but an old, regularly updated page with content that meets searchers' needs should never be penalised because of its publish date.

I'm leaning towards glitch on this one.

I hope I'm correct, because I don't want to serve a terrible user experience (linked videos instead of embeds) just to maintain our rankings.

• after a Fetch and Submit in Search Console

[Dr-Pete]

Unfortunately, they're being pretty tight-lipped on this one. Seems like a glitch, but they don't seem to think it's related to the rankings drop. Possible two events co-occurred, and there was an algo update at the same time as the glitch. Honestly, though, it's not clear at all.

[smmour]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for your reply. Its great to know Google is aware of this. Upon deleting the YouTube videos of my pages, I am seeing them slowly change back to normal dates as well as no dates even showing at all.

Rankings are also slowly going back up. My theory is the old dates taken from the videos affected CTR (many searchers are probably turned off by a post from 2010), which after a few days of decreasing probably affected rankings as well.

[Dr-Pete]

We're definitely seeing similar reports about the bad dates, and it has been brought to Google's attention at reasonably high levels (i.e. I'm confident they know about it, but it's hard to say what they're doing about it).

Unfortunately, it's unclear whether this was connected to a ranking drop in some cases or was a coincidence. We did see substantial movement in the algorithm right around November 10th (the date you posted this question), but, unfortunately, we have no confirmation.

Sorry, wish I had better info right now, but I'll try to find out more.

[smmour]

Hi all,

Over here from my question about this exact problem (https://moz.com/community/q/serps-started-showing-the-incorrect-date-next-to-my-pages).

Can confirm that it is the YouTube embed date. We were going crazy as well trying to figure out where these random dates were coming from (some dated before our domain was even registered).

We've removed all YouTube videos for now (unfortunately) and are currently waiting for a recrawl as well as fetching some in the back-end of Search Console. Will report back once it's completely fixed.

[IWTadmin]

Edward - thanks for posting this. Sitetechie - great detective work!

We are seeing the same issue:

• big drop in page 1 rankings
• old dates appearing in SERPs
• dates match exacty with YouTube vieos embedded on articles

I have changed our YouTube embeds (Wordpress site using oEmbed) to just plain links until Google resolves this issue.

If anyone else has any more information on this bug, please keep posting here.

[GoUp]

Hi yes that does seem as though it is probably it. I have checked a few sites that appear to have the same issue, and they have videos on home page too. We will remove and check.

Very annoying as the substantial decline in rankings coincides direct with this, and it does appear to be a bug. Let's give Rand and the Moz comm the heads up on this. If he points it out you can bet that it will be noticed by the powers up top!

Thanks very much for your help!

Ed

[sitetechie]

We experienced something similar starting yesterday and after tons of digging, finally figured it out. Now, let's spread the word and get Google to fix this ASAP! Does anyone know how to get this bug in front of the right people at Google? Please help as it is causing issues with countless sites. See below for what is happening:

The issue that is causing this seems to be a Google bug. That Google bug is taking the original upload date of a YouTube video you have embedded on the page and then is placing that date in front of your meta description in SERPs for that page. We were going crazy trying to figure this out and eventually figured it out because it was only on our sites/pages with embedded YouTube videos and all of the dates inserted ahead of the description matched up perfectly with the original upload dates of the YouTube videos. I found this to be the case with your agency website date showing in the meta description matching up with the original upload date of the YouTube video embedded on your page.

Let's all work together to put the word out on this so it gets fixed ASAP. It seems to have started in the past 24-48 hours.

[GoUp]

Additionally, we have already removed the blog feed from the home page to see if this would change things, and have requested a recrawl, which has happened. It did not solve the issue, and the dates still appear before the description in the SERPs for the home page, the substantial decline in ranking is still there.

Furthermore, the core pages of the site (home and services) are built in raw html, css etc, with no CMS (no Wordpress).