Post Publish Date on Google

  • Resolved gw808092

    (@gw808092)


    4 years, 1 month ago

    Hello sir. Thanks for this great theme. I’m a pro user.

    I notice something recently.

    Before when i started using this theme. Any day i edit a post, google will display the post edit date as the post publish date on SERP.

    E.G
    If i publish post today 26/Jan/2021, google SERP will display the same date.
    Then if i edit the same post on 30/Jan/2021, google SERP will display this new edit date (30/Jan/2021) as the publish date.

    And i love it that way, that’s the main reason i keep using this theme..

    But now, after several theme update, it’s no longer like that…

    Now google SERP displays the actual publish date all the time, even after editing the post.

    Please what can we do about this?
    Thanks

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • Theme Author Ben Sibley

    (@bensibley)

    Thanks for using Mission News!

    This change would be coming from an SEO or Schema plugin on the site. Mission News will output the date in the byline, but it doesn’t implement the Schema data that Google uses in the SERPs.

    If you can share a link to an example post, I can check out the source code, which will provide more info.

    Theme Author Ben Sibley

    (@bensibley)

    Thanks.

    It looks like the Rank Math plugin is outputting the schema data, and I see both dates output in the source code: https://screenshot.competethemes.com/L1uNKXjQ

    Google will normally choose the publish date, so this is working normally as of now. In the RankMath settings, check if there is a way to set the publish date to be the same as the updated date, and then the date will update in Google. Otherwise, the way to get the new date displaying in Google is to update the date in the post editor.

    Thread Starter gw808092

    (@gw808092)

    Thank you..

    Message from RankMath SEO Admin

    Hello,

    Thank you for contacting Rank Math today.

    Rank Math and most of the popular SEO plugins do not add the post date on the SERP meta description. This value is extracted from the theme by search engines crawlers.

    You will need to modify the page template that displays the single posts to remove the publish date if this is displayed on the SERP.

    Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.

    Theme Author Ben Sibley

    (@bensibley)

    Let me reframe this:

    The way your site is working now is the normal function, and Mission News hasn’t changed the way the date outputs at any point since its release. If you are seeing different results, it’s because something else on the site changed.

    What you’re looking to do is to manipulate the publish date, which is not standard behavior. WordPress themes output whatever date the post is given, so if you want to change the date, you have to republish the post and actually change the publish date.

    What the RankMath folks are suggesting is you remove the date entirely from the template so that it doesn’t show up in the SERPs, but that doesn’t sound like what you want and it also most likely won’t work because their plugin is adding the date to the schema data that Google is most likely using.

    The simplest solution is to republish the posts by updating their publish date, and then Google will use that date since it’s on the page and will show up in the Schema data added by RankMath. Otherwise, you will need to use a child theme and some PHP to modify both the date displayed by Mission News and the date used in the Schema to use the modified date instead.

    Thread Starter gw808092

    (@gw808092)

    Thanks for your help.

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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