As you all know, I read a lot about search news on both official news sites, large and small blogs and all the way down to social media posts and forum posts. The news sites, large blogs and all social media and forum discussions always have timestamps on their content. It is sometimes where I find a blog that writes something and the blog post has no timestamp at all.
Articles and blog posts without timestamps drives me nuts. In fact, if I find a good story and it is without a timestamp, I simply won't include it in my daily SearchCap recaps at Search Engine Land. If I don't know the date and time it was posted, then how can I rely on the story being authentic? Sometimes if the story is really good, I might look at the comments to see the dates on those but even then, I get so mad, I won't include it in the SearchCap.
It seems like I am not the only one who hates this. Google's John Mueller does too:
@lakey @harrybr I hate it when sites do that. :-(
— John Mueller (@JohnMu) February 17, 2016
I suggested that Google release a penalty for not having timestamps on blog posts or articles. Call it the Google No Date Penalty and slap this penalty down hard on bloggers who don't have timestamps.
Of course, Google is pretty good at figuring out what is new and what is old and they have their own discovery timestamps but humans - not always.
Do you want to see a Google No Date Penalty?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
