I notice that quite a few of my product and other pages have dates associated with them in Google search results. Is this good or bad? Take the screenshot below, for example. This book was added to my site in 2009 (actually before that, but 2009 was when I switched to CS-Cart from another cart). Will the fact that it says 2009 make people think the web page is old and irrelevant? If so, what is the best solution? Try to find some way to make these dates not show, or find a way to make them current–as in January 2015?
Any insights appreciated.
[attachment=9039:Screen Shot 2015-01-24 at 7.47.26 PM.png]
export your products to csv and reimport product code,language, store and sate added. …set date added to timeframe you like. dont forget to hold ctrl or shift when pulling down in the sheet editor (OpenOffice or excell
i ment set date added to example 01.01.2015 and pull down to apply date for all products …
I believe (but could be wrong) that Google is trying to inform the user the last time the content of that page was updated. Hence you might want to modify the description or other element of the page. When Google re-indexes it, it will find that it is different than the last time and should change the date for you.
Not sure how relevant this might be for books (since they have publication dates) but for things like searching for information on “things” or “current trends/events”, a more recent date usually implies that it's more relevant. If I search for an answer to a question and get the normal thousands of pages returned, I'm probably going to look for the most current information.
[quote name='kingsleypress' timestamp='1422147191' post='203363']
I notice that quite a few of my product and other pages have dates associated with them in Google search results. Is this good or bad? Take the screenshot below, for example. This book was added to my site in 2009 (actually before that, but 2009 was when I switched to CS-Cart from another cart). Will the fact that it says 2009 make people think the web page is old and irrelevant? If so, what is the best solution? Try to find some way to make these dates not show, or find a way to make them current–as in January 2015?
Any insights appreciated.
[attachment=9039:Screen Shot 2015-01-24 at 7.47.26 PM.png]
[/quote]
As I remember, Google can take the meta information for the snippets or take other information from the page, that is more appropriate for the page content. In some SEO blogs people complain that Google is also showing a random date from the front page in the snippets.
There are two ways for you:
- You may delete all datum from your website or
- Insert the necessary date in the meta tags and in the page content. It is possible that this dates will be shown soon in the snippets.
Best regards, Alt-team.
OK thank you very much for the input guys. I have just looked at the source code for that particular product page and did a search for “2009.” The only place that appears is in a customer review. There are only two reviews for that product, one in 2009 and one in 2014. The same book is available on Amazon. It has 5 reviews there and the oldest review there is 2009 and the newest is 2013. However, Google doesn't assign a date to the Amazon search result.
So is it pulling that date from the review or elsewhere? Like I said, that's the only place there is a 2009 date in the page source.
[quote name='kingsleypress' timestamp='1422276123' post='203456']
OK thank you very much for the input guys. I have just looked at the source code for that particular product page and did a search for “2009.” The only place that appears is in a customer review. There are only two reviews for that product, one in 2009 and one in 2014. The same book is available on Amazon. It has 5 reviews there and the oldest review there is 2009 and the newest is 2013. However, Google doesn't assign a date to the Amazon search result.
So is it pulling that date from the review or elsewhere? Like I said, that's the only place there is a 2009 date in the page source.
[/quote]
In your case, google can take the date from the first review.
As there is no any date in the snippets for the products that have no reviews.
Try to disable data in reviews.
In Cs-Cart 4.2.4. find [color=#262626][font=arial, sans-serif][size=3]design\themes\responsive\templates\addons\discussion\views\discussion\view.tpl[/size][/font][/color]
```php
{hook name=“discussion:items_list_row”}
{$post.name}
{$post.timestamp|date_format:“$settings.Appearance.date_format, $settings.Appearance.time_format”}
{if $discussion.type == "R" || $discussion.type == "B" && $post.rating_value > 0}
{include file="addons/discussion/views/discussion/components/stars.tpl" stars=$post.rating_value|fn_get_discussion_rating}
{/if}
{if $discussion.type == "C" || $discussion.type == "B"}
{$post.message|escape|nl2br nofilter}
{/if}
{/hook}
{$post.timestamp|date_format:"`$settings.Appearance.date_format`, `$settings.Appearance.time_format`"}
```
Comment out the last line.
```php
{*{$post.timestamp|date_format:"`$settings.Appearance.date_format`, `$settings.Appearance.time_format`"}*}
```
And clear the cache. This method will hide the dates on all pages.
It is possible that in some days there will be no dates in the snippets.
Best regards, Alt-team.
On doing more checking, it does appear that the dates are coming from reviews. I'm not really sure I want to do away with the dates on the reviews. It seems like that might take away some authenticity. What do you think?
I think you're going to find that if you add a review that it will change the “content of the page” and that will become the new content date in Google and that's what it uses to display in the snippet. However, it may have algorithms that look deeper than just “did content change”… That would be a question on some of the Google SEO forums.
Find the old video by Matt Cutts
Can I tell Google not to display the date in my site's snippets? - YouTube
He explains why you can not delete the date from the snippet.
Also there is a Google Webmaster channel on youtube.
You may ask your question there.
Best regards, Alt-team.
I don't think that it is possible to change or remove the date from google results, what you can do it to try to SEO for some other pages for those keywords for which this post is showing in google results and hopefully after some work you will see that you new pages will take over the first page of google and it is gone to the second or third page.