Google Drops Home Page Crawl Date From Webmaster Tools

If you login to Google Webmaster Tools you may notice that something is missing. Google has removed the date from the Home page crawl field from the site overview page. The field was grouped in the "Home Page Crawl" section.

Here is a before shot:

And now:

Why was it removed? Google's JohnMu was asked this in a Google Groups thread, where he responded that the date was "frequently incorrect and not really that useful."

John is just being honest and I commend that. Just less than a month ago, we gave Google a hard time about Google Webmaster Tools Slower In Reporting Than Google Cache, specifically calling out that date. John and Google agreed, John explained:

It's generally more useful to look at it on a page- by-page basis, which you can do best either in the Google Cache or by checking your server's logs. Usually there's not much need to check the exact date a page was crawled - it's more important to see that we're continually crawling and indexing the site in general.

So the field is gone - at least for now.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.