Blog posting - does the date really help SEO?
 

I fucking hate having the date/time stamp. I remove the "comments" link too if I'm not going to take the time to approve some comments. I was told Google like the date-stamp. I googled that and some people seem to agree. But you can find a few people to support any theory. I'm asking the GFY geniuses to set the record straight.

I would like to thank the trolls in advance for not answering my question but instead asking their own stupid questions such as: "why dont you like the date stamp". Thanks.

date doesnt do shit for SEO and surfers look at old date time stamps they way you looked at expired milk

date stamps rock

This was the answer I was hoping for so unless wiredguy says you are wrong I'm gonna roll with it.

bump...good question

I like the time/date stamp myself because it adds something unique to the page everytime its spidered. I never tried removing it, so I can't really help you here.
WG

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

ok then...

Ive tried both methods but I cant say whether its helped nor hindered...

I think SEO cares when it sees new content. You do know that you can post-date posts... put stuff up in advance and it shows up when that date rolls around.

you guys worry about trivial details too much :2 cents:

I'm going to agree with the 'it doesn't matter' crowd.

it matters

it matters not.

I would think time stamp helps if you do the web 2.0 thing and submit your posts to the interractive bookmark sites what they call those I dont remember.

The answer is 42

I've built blogs with older timestamped posts to make it look like the site has been around longer and had a few months of archives at launch. I'm not sure what you're trying to use it for, but I can see removing the timestamp as being beneficial if you are going to autopost 10 items at a time or something.

I try to update all of my blogs daily with hand written posts. This is done months in advance. With the blog updated daily, I think it makes a difference for return visitors. Surfers will visit more often if they know you update.

It doesn't hurt. Rochard makes a good point too. The date shows the first time reader that you do update.

that's correct. finally someone knows what they're talking about.

but what he's saying is if he doesnt want to update his blogs all the time, is it more beneficial to just drop the date? depends which viewpoint you take.. i use the dates on my blogs as I know they'll be updated fairly often.. would i bother taking it out if i knew it wouldnt be updated often? probably not.

it does not matter.... at least i hope :)

I just edit the datestamps once a month so my content looks fresh every month!

If these posts are all hand written, not rss feeds, would that uniqueness be enough to satisfy you? I was actually going to leave it on the single post pages along with 4 or 5 other quick and dirty tricks to try to make it more unique from the homepage.

I've noticed that some blog directories will reject you if your last updated date is old, so I guess they would rather you lie and change the dates or take the dates off altogether.

The answer is often 42.

Ding ding ding, we have a winner!!!! :1orglaugh

I personally can't stand sites/blogs with posts without dates, especially if I'm looking at them because they're on a subject I'm researching. I usually skip such sites and instead look at the ones with dates so I know at least when the info was valid, assuming it was valid.

It's probably not an SEO factor as much as it is a user satisfaction factor.

more power with 42

i changed all that timestamps to "galleries" or "free" or similar and i think its working well :)

I am with you on that.

Using the date is a good idea at least for surfers...Just make sure you update because if you don't, you'll look like you're either too lazy or too unsuccessful to update your site.

SE's don't care about the date. If they spider it a few times a week and notice it's being updated a few times a week then they will keep spidering it, they don't rely on your "date stamp" nor do they give a shit. Blogs traditionally have had them for surfers to quickly gauge whether content is fresh.

Do your self this favor.. Google the keywords you want to hit. Look at the top 20 sites. Do you see date time stamps..????

If you don't intend to put date stamps that probably means you aren't going to be making regular posts and surfers will notice the lack of dates and the dearth of posts or both.

There are multiple standpoints in this thread based on various things like surfer's opinion, etc.

To answer your question, however: search engines are not going to care about whether your site/blog/whatever has a date/timestamp on it. The more sophisticated search engines have their own methodology to determine how stale or fresh content is (revisiting a page over the course of a few weeks is usually the case).

bump for you!

and another thing that come in my mind, if you have rss blogs with many sponsors, keep the date stamp, cause without it your seo can be only messed up, cause there is big possibility that sponsors will send you update with "hot teen girl" in header, and all those posts will be on one chaotic page ... hope you got what i wanted to say :)

Keep the date for your visitors and don't worry about the search engine side of it.

quoted for truth

The only time I've had blogs rejected was if they were not old enough (i.e.: they want the blog to be 3 months old, and it was only a month), but rejecting blogs that are not updated makes as much sense as well.

I keep the date there, atleast It's good for first time surfers to see that the stuff is new and that might make them come back for more later.

right-on

while I don't care how recently a porn site was updated, other sites get a click (or not) from me from the Google listings based upon how recent they are, as shown by stamp