Dates on SERPS

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

[HughMungus]

Not for my site in particular, but I've noticed that some listings have dates and some do not. Why is that?

[smayler]

I think I read somewhere here if the page was changed since last crawl it will have the date listed beside.

[sem4u]

It indicates the date that Google has crawled that page. Sometimes known as a 'fresh date'. The actual content of the page may not have changed at all.

[BennyBlanco]

In addition, it has been said that you can expect your SERP results to change after the date falls off.

[rrl]

Looks like G is showing the spammy directories from a couple of weeks ago again.

[Visit Thailand]

Should be noted that you do not get a date if you are using the robots or googlebot no cache tag.

[HughMungus]

It indicates the date that Google has crawled that page. Sometimes known as a 'fresh date'. The actual content of the page may not have changed at all.

So...why do some have fresh dates and some do not?

Why not just leave the last crawl date on the SERP?

[powerofeyes]

Not all pages of a site are crawled everyday, Google shows the date next to the SE result only for pages that are cached on that particular day,

They dont show dates for pages crawled more than 3 days old, This is for obvious reasons, They show dates only to show the freshness of their index, Showing old date near a particular SERP will be an insane option,

ALternatively you can check the cached date of a particular page by seeing the cache version of that page, it shows something like this on top,

This is G o o g l e's cache of [******.com...] as retrieved on 14 Aug 2004 18:32:13 GMT.

[graywolf]

In addition, it has been said that you can expect your SERP results to change after the date falls off.

Untrue. I have a number one spot that I have held onto for over three months (moderately competitive) the date comes on and off all the time, and I haven't moved.