Google’s John Mueller spoke a bit extra about when you need to replace the date within the lastmod tag within the XML sitemap file. He stated on Twitter if you’re “offering one thing new for search engines like google and yahoo that you simply’d like mirrored in search,” then replace the date, if not, then do not.
John stated, “Are you offering one thing new for search engines like google and yahoo that you simply’d like mirrored in search? In that case, flag it. When you’re simply altering the timestamp within the footer, positive the web page has technically modified too, however ought to that be prioritized — in all probability not.”
Listed below are these tweets:
Are you offering one thing new for search engines like google and yahoo that you simply’d like mirrored in search? In that case, flag it. When you’re simply altering the timestamp within the footer, positive the web page has technically modified too, however ought to that be prioritized — in all probability not.
— johnmu isn’t a chatbot but 🐀 (@JohnMu) February 24, 2023
John added, “The problem is extra that some CMS’s / servers set the lastmod to the present date/time for all pages. This makes that information ineffective. Good CMS’s setting it thoughtfully, even when not all the time good, is way more helpful.”
As a reminder, in 2015 Google stated they do not actually use the lastmod date however then modified that in 2020 they stated they do. The present Google documentation says, “Google makes use of the lastmod worth if it is constantly and verifiably (for instance by evaluating to the final modification of the web page) correct.”
Microsoft Bing not too long ago stated the lastmod date is crucial and supplied tremendous helpful stats on how individuals replace the date:
- 58% of hosts have at the very least one XML sitemap.
- 84% of those sitemaps have a lastmod attribute set.
- 79% have lastmod values right.
- 18% have lastmod values not accurately set.
- 3% has lastmod values for under among the URLs.
- 16% of those sitemaps haven’t got a lastmod attribute set.
- 42% of hosts don’t have one XML sitemap
Discussion board dialogue at Twitter.
