Influence your byline dates in Google Search

A byline date is the date that Google estimates that the web page was updated or published.
When Google can determine the byline date of your page or video, it can expose this information
in Search results, if this information is considered to be useful to
the user. You can provide information to help Google determine the byline date.

Curious Panda

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Google doesn’t depend on a single date factor because all factors can be
prone to issues. That’s why our systems look at several factors to determine our best estimate
of when a page was published or significantly updated.

How to provide date information to Google

To provide date information to Google, follow these steps:

1. Follow the best practices for influencing byline dates.
2. Add a user-visible date to the page and feature it prominently. Label
   your dates appropriately with text like “Publish” or “Last updated”. Here are some examples
   of how you can highlight date information about a web page:
   • Posted Feb 4, 2019
   • Published February 4, 2019
   • Last updated: Feb 14, 2018
   • Updated Feb 14, 2019 8pm ET
3. Specify dates with structured data.
   We recommend that you add a subtype of
   CreativeWork
   (such as Article,
   BlogPosting,
   ou VideoObject),
   and specify the datePublished and/or dateModified fields.
   Be sure to follow Google’s structured data guidelines
   to help our crawlers understand your article dates.

Best practices for influencing byline dates

• The date is required; the time is not: However, we recommend
  you provide a time and timezone in markup for added precision.
• If you choose to specify the timezone, provide the correct timezone,
  taking into account daylight saving time
  as appropriate.
• Make your dates and times consistent. Ensure that the date (and optional
  time and timezone) match between the equivalent user-visible and structured values. Time
  and timezone are optional in user-visible data even if provided in structured data.
• Don’t specify future dates, or the date of the action described on the page.
  The dates must describe the publication or update date of the page, not the stories or events
  described therein. You can add Event markup to the
  page to describe the activities listed on the page, if you like.
• Minimize the presence of other dates on the page: If you’ve followed the
  best practices and find incorrect dates are being selected, consider removing some or
  all other dates that appear on the page.
• If your page is intended to show up in Google News search,
  follow these additional guidelines.