remove timestamps metadata

Hi there,

Currently the meta tags arrays do not use keys that correspond to the metatag contained in the value of the array item. Admittedly this is a limitation of the initial design. This enhancement has been planned for 3.X.

This means that currently it is required to search the value, for example, using strpos() or preg_match().

You have to attach the filtering function(s) to the amt_schemaorg_metadata_content hook (amt_schemaorg_metadata_product for products) for schema.org and to the amt_dublin_core_metadata_head for dublin core.

function customize_remove_timestamp_metatag( $metatags ) {
    $metatags_new = array();
    $pattern = '#(copyrightYear|dateModified|datePublished|contentUrl|thumbnailUrl|dcterms\.modified|dcterms\.available|dcterms\.created)#';
    foreach ( $metatags as $metatag ) {
        if ( ! preg_match($pattern, $metatag) ) {
            $metatags_new[] = $metatag;
        }
    }
    return $metatags_new;
}
add_filter( 'amt_schemaorg_metadata_content', 'customize_remove_timestamp_metatag' );
add_filter( 'amt_dublin_core_metadata_head', 'customize_remove_timestamp_metatag' );

This may require some adjustments.

BTW, are you sure it is required to remove these meta tags? Please, make sure to pass the page HTML code through structured data validators.

Feel free to ask any questions.

Kind Regards,
George

Hey George,

Thank you so much for your kind attention. This is great, your code works just as i need it to. My goal here is the same as removing the publication date from the post, which is normally printed by WP themes: i don’t want it to show or influence search results, because the information i provide in the content is basically time-independent.

Maybe removing the time metadata is an overkill, would you say so? I will, anyway, check through validators.

Thank you for such a nice, high-level plugin.
Best regards,
Eduardo

Hi Eduardo,

I see.

It is difficult to say because we do not have inside information about how Google or any other search engine uses the dates that are found, so we can only make guesses.

My thoughts about it are like this:

Google is definitely aware of the creation date of the content, since this can be determined by the date & time it indexed it for the first time. So, removing the creation/publication dates might not be necessary.

Moreover, it is possible for search engines to approximately determine the modification dates of the content by comparing the data (or a hash of it) that is currently being indexed to the data (or a hash of it) as it had been indexed in previous visits of the indexing spider. So, removing the modification date might not have the expected result as well.

So, in my opinion, Google or any other search engine has the technical capability to determine the publication/modification dates, regardless of the fact that they appear on the page or not.

So, hiding the dates from the search engines might not be a good idea. On the other hand, not displaying the dates to users might make sense, as long as the content is time independent.

But this is just a wild guess. You would definitely have to try and evaluate the result after a period of time.

Also, thanks for the kind words about the plugin. If you considered adding a review about it here on www.remarpro.com, that would be fantastic.

Feel free to ask any questions about the plugin. Keep in mind that sometimes it takes a while to reply.

Best Regards,
George

Eduardo, thanks for your review. I hadn’t noticed it earlier. I’m glad the plugin works fine for you.

Best Regards,
George

Thank you George, I will try removing the date information, and see what happens.
Best regards!

Hi Eduardo,

I did some testing out of curiosity. The code had to be updated to the following so that the og:updated_time meta tag is also removed (if opengraph is enabled):

function customize_remove_timestamp_metatag( $metatags ) {
    $metatags_new = array();
    $pattern = '#(copyrightYear|dateModified|datePublished|contentUrl|thumbnailUrl|dcterms\.modified|dcterms\.available|dcterms\.created|og\:updated_time)#';
    foreach ( $metatags as $metatag ) {
        if ( ! preg_match($pattern, $metatag) ) {
            $metatags_new[] = $metatag;
        }
    }
    return $metatags_new;
}
add_filter( 'amt_schemaorg_metadata_content', 'customize_remove_timestamp_metatag' );
add_filter( 'amt_metadata_head', 'customize_remove_timestamp_metatag' );

Both the Google & Yandex structured data test tools did not report any error about the missing dates. So, I guess it should be fine to remove the date-related meta tags, as far as metadata validation is concerned.

Best Regards,
George

Also,

Thank you for donating to the project. It is much appreciated!

George

??

Hi George, Thank you for the update. I believe i may have a small problem, or i am not understanding something.

I have enabled the Metadata review feature, and i can see all desired the metadata for my homepage, which is a static page – including the custom keywords and description. I can also see it if i check the generated source code in the page.

However, i get four warnings from https://developers.google.com/structured-data/testing-tool/ saying "Type Not Specified (4)". They all say: "The node is empty. Check if this is desired or remove it."
(please pardon if the wording is not exact, i got the results in my language and translated them.)

I get no warnings whatsoever in posts. Please let me know if you need the url.

Is the warning displayed in the Article object or the hatom object? ‘Article’ is generated by the plugin, while the ‘hatom’ is a microformats entity which most probably exists in the theme (in the class attribute of the HTML tags).

Looks like it is the Article object – i can’t see it in the results. There are 4 sections in the report:

> Type not specified (4 yellow warnings)
> Website (green ok)
> hatom (green ok)
> Custom search result filters (no warning here)

My site is: https://taijiquan.pro.br

The Article object is only generated on content pages (posts, pages, custom post types etc). On the front page the main schema.org entity is set to ‘WebSite’.

I tested this page: https://taijiquan.pro.br/en/lessons/

I get 5 warnings. The Article object, which is generated by add-meta-tags, seems OK. The result is a bit strange because the warnings do not point to a specific line of the HTML code. Could you please temporarily deactivate add-meta-tags and try to validate again?

Also, if posting anything publicly is a problem, feel free to email me at gnot -at- g-loaded.eu

Ok, i deactivated Add Meta Tags, and on the page https://taijiquan.pro.br/en/lessons/ , i got 3 warnings. They look exactly the same as when there were 5 warnings, just in smaller number. By the way, i get 3 warning on the homepage too (they were 4 with Add Meta Tags on).

I’ll leave Add Meta Tags off until you have a look.

I checked it. The point is that if I just press [enter] in the content box on the left without making any changes, and then re-test it, the warnings are gone.

This leads me to think that the problem might be a character which somehow confuses the validator. In other words, it’s very possible that the problem is a part of the content (maybe not proper utf-8 text, cannot tell for sure) and not the HTML code or the metadata. This piece of content is re-used by the plugin in a description or a category and thus more warnings are recorded.

Can you check line 340 of the HTML code of the page: https://taijiquan.pro.br/en/

Instead of this ‘dot’ character maybe you could use the HTML entity •? (see list here)

I tested the page on a HTML5 validator and it stopped parsing it after line 340.