'x days ago' in the Google SERPs

[Savanadry]

Recently I noticed google had started putting 'x days ago' next to some of my site's meta descriptions. I always assumed these were the last time I visited the page. Strangely though I noticed at a friends house, (different country, computer, on holiday) that the 'x days ago' appeared for him too. It relates to the last time I updated the page.

I think that this is probably a great advantage in the serp's but don't see it replicated for any of my other sites, which I keep updated just as often, and are cached very quickly. I assume because they are wordpress and unlike the static site return a server response of the same published date whether I update it or not.

I am in the process of moving the static site onto wordpress for ease of use but don't want to lose the 'x days ago' in the serp's - would I have to republish each page each time I update it? Seems like doing something like that would be seen by google as manipulation, but it happens anyway on a static site?

Has anyone else seen these date notifications not related to their own visits? Do you guys republish each time you update a page?

[anallawalla]

They have been there for as long as I can remember, but they reflect when the page was indexed, not your visit. Look for any Google News item and you will see things like "39 seconds ago, 4 hours ago" etc. Clearly, you won't have visited all those news articles before if they are very fresh.

[giggle]

Think that the date is used when the site is WordPress.

[rainborick]

Google rolled this out quite some time ago. It's taken from indicators on the page itself, rather than the server response header or an XML Sitemap. They do pick up the date stamp on blog posts and such, or you can simply include an explicit message on your page like: "This page was last updated on June 10, 2001" in most recognized date formats and that date will be displayed at the start of the snippet when the algorithm thinks a modification date should be included.

[g1smd]

Related topic:

Some sites have an option to present data to their users tagged as 'x days ago'. In some circumstances this can be quite helpful. However, when the data is presented to a search engine, send the actual date instead. Seeing 'x days ago' in a snippet of unknown vintage (in SERPs) is quite unhelpful to users.

[deadsea]

One site I worked with had a privacy policy link in the footer that indicated when the privacy policy was last updated. Something like <a href="privacy">Privacy Policy (last updated Jan 1, 1993)</a>. Google started thinking that all of our pages had been last updated on this date and we started looking really stale in the SERPs. We moved that date to be only on the privacy policy page rather than in the links to the privacy policy and Google stopped doing stupid things.

[lucy24]

Conversely... Ever tried searching for a Forums post that you know appeared within the past month? No use constraining your search by date: g### uses the date of the first post in the thread, no matter how long ago that was.

I fed in a cluster of search terms that should have brought one of my pages bobbing to the surface-- in fact it produced eight, which strikes me as over the top in the circumstances-- and there was neither hide nor hair of a time indicator. That tells me the old-fashioned <address> line doesn't count as a date, just as Content. (I already knew this, thanks to Keywords, but it's more confirmation.)