User Friendly Google

Date Description Critical in Google site description

[David on Scottwood]

As a internet "newbie" for all practical purposes, I find it distracting that sites appear to be relevant but upon close examination they are not. Having the date of origin listed boldly in the title would help greatly in determining the relevance of an item to the searcher. If most looked at or paid sites show first the creation date or modification date it would be most valuable. Also having the date might limit the frustration of dead ends in searches.

When doing research of a topic the date would help to determine its relevance.

Thank you.

[phranque]

welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com], David_on_Scottwood!

- not all pages contain content that has any relevance to the date of creation.
- the title element is usually considered the most important on-page factor for search optimization and it would typically be a huge waste of opportunity to spend that much "title space" representing a date.
- the "More search tools" option in column 1 of the Google SERP is always available if you require a more temporally specific search result set.

[David on Scottwood]

Thank you for your response. While you are correct that representing a date would use valuable title space, human "life" time is also a limited quantity and has value as does a user friendly design; since one cannot assume the level of competence of the user. The assumption that searches are intuitive is illogical. The web is so large it is easy to get lost. Also one sometimes finds they are redirected away from what they are seeking to enhance commercialization on the net.

[piatkow]

I put dates on relevant pages but that can give unexpected problems. On one site we had held prices for over two years and had a date on the page. I started getting phone calls and emails asking for the "current" prices.