In recent weeks I’ve noticed a disturbing new trend in Google SERP’s: Google has become much more aggressive at trying to reverse engineer the publication date of a post/page.First let’s be clear about what we’re discussing. In some cases, when you do a search, Google will show a date in the listing. See the example below:
Initially, Google only looked at the date that was near the H1/Title of the page and, if it found something, it used that as the date in the SERP’s. This was fairly easy to override: when a post hit a certain age you could “remove” the date with a date based trigger and the date would disappear from the SERP’s. Now, however, Google has gotten a lot more aggressive in trying to assign a date to a page/post. Here are some methods I’ve seen them use:
- Full format dates inside the main content of pages (month/day/year)
- Dates in the comments, when no other date appears on a page
- Decoding dates in URL’s (I have seen them decode 20091225 and 12252009 formats)
I have a few sites in which I use date format URL’s; at this point, I am giving very serious consideration to changing that procedure. In fact, I’m testing as we speak. Issuing a massive sitewide 301 is a dangerous thing and not something I’d recommend for everyone. That said, if you like to roll the dice and are on WordPress, give Dean’s Permalink Migration plugin a try. It makes the whole process pretty painless.
photo credit: dierken
Related posts:
- Thesis Tutorial – Custom Post Dates The following post is part of my Thesis tutorial series....
- Wondering Why I see So Many Dates in The SERPS Here’s a screen shot of a Google search I did...
- Reverse Mad Libs SEO Here’s another quick and fast tip for you … people...
- Why Google’s +1 Needs an On Page Component Last week Google announced a new addition to the search...
- Optimizing WordPress Page Titles, Post Titles and Page Slugs While wordpress is one of my favorite CMS platforms, out...
Advertisers:
- Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
- BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
- Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
- Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
- Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
- TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
- Article-Writing-services.org - Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
- Link Building Services - Hire WeBuildLink.com for well-planned advanced link building campaigns. Very affordable. Contact us now for a FREE evaluation.
- Try HOTH Plus+ NOW - The First 1-Stop Link Building Solution Powered by 100% College Educated Copywriters!
- Professional website designs - Get a unique brand image with website designs that sets you apart and convert your visitors into customers. Make a brand, not just a website
See my disclaimer about advertising and affiliate links
