• seohunters9

        See all notifications

        Skip to content
        Moz logo Menu open Menu close
        • Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Pro Home
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Home
          • STAT
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Home
          • Compare SEO Products
          • Moz Data
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Link Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • MozBar
          • More Free SEO Tools
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Moz Academy
          • MozCon
          • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Small Business Solutions
          • The Moz Story
          • New Releases
        • Log in
        • Log out
        • Products
          • Moz Pro

            Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

          • Moz Local

            Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

          • STAT

            SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

          • Moz API

            Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

          • Compare SEO Products

            See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

          • Moz Data

            Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

          Let your business shine with Listings AI
          Moz Local

          Let your business shine with Listings AI

          Learn more
        • Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Analysis

            Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

          • Keyword Explorer

            Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

          • Link Explorer

            Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

          • Competitive Research

            Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

          • MozBar

            See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

          • More Free SEO Tools

            Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
          Moz Pro

          NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

          Learn more
        • Learn SEO
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO

            The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

          • SEO Learning Center

            Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

          • On-Demand Webinars

            Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

          • How-To Guides

            Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

          • Moz Academy

            Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

          • MozCon

            Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
          Moz API

          Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

          Find your plan
        • Blog
        • Why Moz
          • Digital Marketers

            Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

          • Small Business Solutions

            Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

          • Agency Solutions

            Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

          • Enterprise Solutions

            Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

          • The Moz Story

            Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

          • New Releases

            Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

          Surface actionable competitive intel
          New Feature

          Surface actionable competitive intel

          Learn More
        • Log in
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz Local Dashboard
          • Moz API
          • Moz API Dashboard
          • Moz Academy
        • Avatar
          • Moz Home
          • Notifications
          • Account & Billing
          • Manage Users
          • Community Profile
          • My Q&A
          • My Videos
          • Log Out

        The Moz Q&A Forum

        • Forum
        • Questions
        • My Q&A
        • Users
        • Ask the Community

        Welcome to the Q&A Forum

        Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

        1. Home
        2. SEO Tactics
        3. On-Page Optimization
        4. Does Hiding the article´s date in a blog affect SEO?

        Moz Q&A is closed.

        After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

        Does Hiding the article´s date in a blog affect SEO?

        On-Page Optimization
        4
        4
        8173
        Loading More Posts
        • Watching

          Notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread.

        • Not Watching

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Show question in unread if category is not ignored.

        • Ignoring

          Do not notify me of new replies.
          Do not show question in unread.

        • Oldest to Newest
        • Newest to Oldest
        • Most Votes
        Reply
        • Reply as question
        Locked
        This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
        • goperformancelabs
          goperformancelabs last edited by

          We are running a blog and would like to hide date, as users find the article less interesting if they are dated more than 2 years ago.

          Will hiding the article´s date in a blog affecto SEO?

          Thanks in advance

          u2cJxsr

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • JohnCrenshawCincy
            JohnCrenshawCincy last edited by

            I can answer that question as I just did an experiment on this which you can review here: http://www.rlmseo.com/blog/seo-impact-blog-post-dates/

            The summary is this:

            Assuming no displayed date as a baseline, recent dates (not sure exactly how recent - looks like up to 3-12 months but probably depends on industry, etc) will boost traffic significantly.

            Compared to the baseline, distant past publish dates will reduce traffic a good bit.

            I would recommend this:

            • Display update date instead of publish date.
            • If a post is still relevant, update it, maybe even add a disclaimer for your users that the post was first published on x date but has been updated and is current.

            We've seen dramatic traffic increases with this strategy and it ensures people know how relevant your post is, which is actually more important than the publish date.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • JaneCopland
              JaneCopland last edited by

              Hi,

              I'm with Philip on doing this selectively. Many users find content hard to digest in the manner it was intended when they have no idea if it was written in 2006 or 2014. If your industry is one where time really doesn't matter or change anything, this may be different. From an SEO point of view, Google still knows when it first crawled a piece of content, so not including a date won't fool Google into believing the content is fresh when it's not.

              I agree that creating evergreen content where appropriate is also a good move - articles, case studies, etc. that can be updated where appropriate (and blogged about + linked to to spur re-indexing).

              If you see a marked drop off in traffic to or engagement in a post from 2+ years ago that used to be successful for the site, I'd consider re-writing the post with a current slant, linking to the old one from the post and being upfront about the fact that you're refreshing an old article. You can move engagement to the new post. If there really isn't anything new to say about the subject, you can still cover it again "for new readers" and redirect the old post to the new one, canonicalise it or leave it as is if there are no duplicate content issues.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • Philip-DiPatrizio
                Philip-DiPatrizio last edited by

                I wouldn't recommend hiding the date because you don't want users to know that the content is old.  What about when you publish something fresh and someone lands on the page but they can't find a date?  They won't know how up to date that information is.  I think a lot of people look for dates on blog posts, and rightfully so.  They want to see that they're getting good information.  You're right, if something is 2+ years old they might look for something more up to date.  But you can update old blog posts and re-date them.  Add something new to it, make some changes, and update the date.

                Imagine an SEO strategy blog that didn't date the posts.  You would be doing your visitors a complete disservice by hiding the date.  You might have a post all about article directory submissions and they won't see that it's from 2008.  That's not enhancing user experience, and people won't be happy with you.

                Old content won't always be a bad thing.  Read #4, "Burstiness," on this blog post: http://www.seobythesea.com/2014/03/incomplete-google-ranking-signals-1/

                It's really interesting and a great read about how older content will sometimes receive the boost in rankings over fresh content.

                EDIT: I'd like to add that it's completely okay to hide the date in some circumstances.  You might have some sort of evergreen content that truly will stand the test of time and info may not ever, or rarely, change on the topic.  For instance, if you were writing a blog post about how to improve your basketball shot.  Who cares if the post is from 2006?  In that case, hiding the date isn't going to reduce the overall user experience.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Browse Questions

                Explore more categories

                • Moz Tools

                  Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                • SEO Tactics

                  Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                • Community

                  Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                • Digital Marketing

                  Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                • Research & Trends

                  Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                • Support

                  Connect on product support and feature requests.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • Liquid2015

                  Will shortening down the amount of text on my pages affect it's SEO performance?

                  My website has several pages with a lot of text that becomes pretty boring. I'm looking at shortening down the amount of copy on each page but then within the updated, shortened copy, integrating more target keywords naturally. Will shortening down the current copy have a negative effect on my SEO performance?

                  On-Page Optimization | | Liquid2015
                  0
                • Substance-create

                  Will changing a URL negatively affect ranking?

                  Hello Mozzers, We would like to change the URL for a page on our website which ranks well for some our keyphrases/words. We are hoping the change of URL, through the addition of an additional keyword would help boost the rank of that URL further. At the moment out page gets 2 x A and 2 x B 1xF on the MOZ page rank tool using 5 keyphrase/word variations . One phrase ranks 4, one ranks 3 and the other 3 are 'not in the top 50' Our plan was to change the URL, using SHF404, and use 'Fetch' in the Google search console to re-submit the page to Google. Appreciate you can't give any guarantees how Google will behave, just wondered what your thoughts were on the wisdom of changing the URL in the first place? Thanks Ian

                  On-Page Optimization | | Substance-create
                  0
                • CamperConnect14

                  Does homepage SEO exist at all?

                  hi Just read a Yoast article explaining that the homepage should never be optimized for a specific keyword and should only be optimized for its business or brand name. i have a large site that I'd like to rank (or increase traffic for as I know people get irritated with that term now) for 'Campervan hire'. It has plenty of sub pages going after 'Campervan hire 'location'' for example. it makes sense to me for the homepage keyword - my core keyword - to be 'Campervan hire' and for the homepage to be optimised for this. However, the article I've just read (https://yoast.com/homepage-seo/) suggests a separate page for this keyword. What are your thoughts pls?? thanks

                  On-Page Optimization | | CamperConnect14
                  2
                • CKerr

                  URL Path. What is better for SEO

                  Hello Moz people, Is it better for SEO to have a URL path like this: flowersite.com/anniversary_flowers/dozen_roses OR flowersite.com/dozen_roses Is it better to have the full trail of pages in the URL?

                  On-Page Optimization | | CKerr
                  0
                • brianflannery

                  Stolen Content reposted on other sites. How does this affect ranking?

                  Visitors often copy and paste my content and post it elsewhere... on Facebook, on Tumblr, on forums and sometimes on competing websites... but they don't link to me. How does Google treat this duplicated content? What is the best way to handle it? File DCMA claims or ask them for a link?

                  On-Page Optimization | | brianflannery
                  0
                • seom2014

                  Choosing a title tag in seo (H1 or H2 or H3)

                  I look many times on google that what is the best tag to set in title for seo, H1 or H2 or H3 In many forums and sites they are asking that you need to put only H2 tag in title and someone ask to put H1 in title and i am confused, Some body tell me the correct tag for seo in google, or any other search engine.

                  On-Page Optimization | | seom2014
                  0
                • ATMOSMarketing56

                  SEO for Online Auto Parts Store

                  I'm currently doing an audit for an online auto parts store and am having a hard time wrapping my head around their duplicate content issue. The current set up is this: The catalogue starts with the user selecting their year of vehicle They then choose their brand (so each of the year pages have listed every single brand of car, creating duplicate content) They then choose their model of car and then the engine And then this takes them to a page listing every type/category of product they sell (so each and every model type/engine size has the exact same content!) This is amounting to literally thousands of pages being seen as duplicates It's a giant mess. Is using rel=canonical the best thing to do? I'm having a hard time seeing a logical way of structuring the site to avoid this issue. Anyone have any ideas?

                  On-Page Optimization | | ATMOSMarketing56
                  0
                • kicksetc

                  What is the most SEO friendly Shopping Cart?

                  What is the most SEO friendly shopping cart?  I have been using zen-cart for 6 years.  Seems Google doesn't like it as much as other carts.  I started a new site about 6 months ago using Magento.  When I build links to this site the terms move.  The terms are very similar.  So I would imagine the competition is the same.  I am curious if anybody has tried with different carts and found anyone to be better than the others.  Also the new site has about one tenth the amount of products but has a lot more pages indexed.

                  On-Page Optimization | | kicksetc
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.