2009年にWPBeginnerを始めたとき、私はブログの投稿日に日付を入れないことにした。そうしたのは、自分が他の人より賢いとフィードバックしていたからだ。私の持論は、WPBeginnerはブログではないということだった。WordPressコーデックスやウィキペディアのような情報源であり、どちらも投稿に日付はありません。それに私のフィードバックは、ブログ投稿から日付を削除することで、ユーザーを騙して私のコンテンツがエバーグリーンであると思わせることができるというものだった。しかし、それは大間違いだった。ここ数ヶ月、ますます多くのインターネットマーケティング担当者や自称 “SEO専門家 “が、WordPressブログ投稿から日付を削除するようユーザーにアドバイスしている傾向に気づいた。この投稿では、私がなぜ最初は日付を入れないことにしたのか、そしてその後何が私の考えを変えたのかについて詳しく説明する。また、ブログ投稿日に日付を入れることがSEOにどのような影響を与えるのか（ポストペンギンとパンダ）についても取り上げます。最後に、私の目標は、この投稿全体を読んだ後、あなたの問題が日付にあるのではなく、むしろ公開する日付にあることを理解していただくことです。私は、あなた、ユーザー、そして検索エンジンが満足する解決策を見つけた。
日付を削除したり、含めなかったりする理由
2009年にWPBeginnerを始めた当初、私はこのサイトをWordPress CodexやWikipediaのようなリソースサイトだと考えていました。もしあなたがこの2つのどちらかを使ったことがあるなら、エントリーにタイムスタンプや日付がないことはご存知でしょう。その利点は何だろう？さて、ユーザーとして、私たちは古いコンテンツに対するビルトイン偏見を持っている。日付を見た瞬間に、私たちはそのコンテンツを「古い 」か「 関連性がある」の2つのカテゴリーのどちらかに分類するようにプログラムされているのだ。理論的には、コンテンツが古いからといって関連性がないということにはならないが、ユーザーはそのように思い込んでしまう。ブロガーとして、私は自分のコンテンツをみんなに読んでもらいたいと思っていたので、そのフィードバックは私にとって不愉快だった。そこで私はどうしたか？投稿日に日付を入れないことにした。私のフィードバックは、人々はウィキペディアが最新かどうかわからない関連情報を持っていても読むということだった。ユーザーは公開された日付を知ることがないので、ウィキペディアに疑いの目を向けるのだ。
ここ数ヶ月の間に、多くのインターネットマーケティング担当者やSEO担当者が、ブログ投稿日に日付を入れることに反対しているのを目にした。それぞれに理由があるが、すべて同じバズワード、エバーグリーンコンテンツに沿っている。CopyBloggerのような人気ブログが日付を削除することを決めたとき、それは他の人々が従うべき手本となる。
私はすでにこの道を歩んできたが、なぜそれが間違った道なのかを説明できる。
私が二度と日付を削除しない理由
同じ過ちは二度と繰り返さない。最初にデートをしなかったのは間違いだった。これを読んだ後、あなたも同じようにすることを願っています。WPBeginnerを始めたとき、私の主な優先事項はWordPressチュートリアルで ユーザーを助けることでした。他のブロガーと同じように、私は自分のコンテンツがエバーグリーンだと思いたかった。しかし、実際はそうではありません。投稿をさかのぼって更新しても、すべてを常に最新の状態に保つことは不可能なのです。
最初のうちは、日付に関する問題や不満はなかった。しかし、6カ月も経つと、ユーザーから古い投稿に対する苦情のメールを受け取るようになった。最初は、すぐに投稿を更新していました。しかし、サイトが大きくなるにつれて、すべての投稿を更新することは難しくなっていった。定期的に日付に関するメールやツイート、Facebookメッセージが何通も届くようになった。頑固さに見切りをつけ、投稿日に日付を追加するまでに1年半かかった。
今にして思えば、サイトに日付を表示しなかったことが、ユーザーやWordPressのコミュニティに対してどれほど大きな不利益を与えていたかを思い知らされた。WordPressの初心者を助けたかったのですが、古いスクリーンショットやチュートリアルを見ていることに気づかず、誤った案内をしてしまったり、さらに混乱を招いてしまうこともありました。
そのうちに、常緑の投稿はほとんどないということも学びました。常に新しいことを学び、自分のやり方も変わっていく。過去の投稿と矛盾することを話しているセッションで、誰かが自分の言葉を引用したとき、あなたは衝撃を受ける。もしその投稿に日付がなければ、その投稿が古いとは言えない。
要するに、本当に読者を大切にしているのであれば、日付は削除しないということだ。ブログというのは、その定義からして、古くなるものなのだ。日付があろうがなかろうが、投稿を逆時系列で表示することに変わりはない。もし本当に自分のコンテンツがエバーグリーンだと信じているのなら、その順番を変えてランダムな順番で投稿を表示したらどうだろう（うん、これは挑戦だ）。
待てよ、自分のブログ投稿が古いとわかっていて、どうして満足できるのだろう？Googleは古いコンテンツにペナルティを与えないのか？過去の投稿に対するユーザーの偏見のせいで、読者を逃しているのではないか？私は、私自身と読者を満足させる日付の表示方法を見つけたので、満足している。検索エンジンも満足だろう。
新規: 日付表示方法、読者、検索エンジン
私の問題は日付にあるのではないことに気づいた。公開する日付」機能に問題があったのだ。なぜなら、それは私がサイトに費やした作業量を正確に反映していなかったからだ。公開日機能は書籍に関係する。なぜなら、書籍の投稿者はオリジナルの書籍を更新しないからだ。代わりにバージョン2を出すからだ。ブロガーとして、私は個人的にWPBeginnerで毎日1つか2つの投稿を更新しているが、その投稿はまだ過去の投稿日に公開されている。幸運なことに、WordPressには「最終更新日」を表示する機能があり、これは私がすべて必要としていた解決策だと思う。
WPBeginnerの投稿データで、公開した日付を最終更新日に置き換えることにしました。コードは以下のようになります：
[cbk1］
WordPressのmodified time関数は、投稿の最終更新時刻をチェックします。最後に更新したのが投稿を公開した時であれば、投稿日を表示します。しかし、その投稿を6ヶ月後に更新した場合は、最終更新日が表示されます。
私は、今日の世界では、最終更新日の方が実際の公開日よりも読者にとって価値があると考えている。投稿を全部書き直したのであれば、公開した日付は関係ない。
さて、検索エンジンに関しては、もしあなたがデザインから日付を削除することで検索エンジンを騙せると思っているのなら、それはとても甘い考えです。WordPressのサイトマップには各投稿の最終更新日が含まれており、おそらくGoogleウェブマスターツールにサイトマップを送信している可能性がある。私は個人的にユーザーのために記事を書いているし、検索エンジンよりもユーザーのフィードバックの方がずっと大切だ。しかし、上記のコードは、検索エンジンに投稿の最終更新時刻を伝える適切なスキーママークアップに従っている。そう、つまり、Googleはあなたのエントリーの横に、オリジナルの公開した日付ではなく、最終更新日を表示するということだ。
最後に、更新時刻機能はブロガーとしての私を満足させてくれる。私は自分自身をかなり高い基準で見ているし、ユーザーも私を見逃さないことを知っている（皆さん、私に厳しくしてくれてありがとう）。すべてのブログが古くなることを意図しているにもかかわらず、WPBeginnerの利用者はそれをする権限がありません。私たちは定期的に古い投稿の報告を受け、できるだけ早く更新するよう最善を尽くしています。もし古い投稿を見かけたら、@wpBeginnerまでツイートしていただくか、お問い合わせフォームからお知らせください。
この解決策で、みんながハッピーになれますよ。
今日でも、私はWPBeginnerをブログ以上のものとして見ています。最高のWordPressリソースサイトであり、日付を追加することでさらに良くなったと思います。時間的な関連性を持つことは、私たちを悪いリソースにするのではなく、むしろ私たちをより有用なリソースサイトにします。私の意見で、WordPressブログの投稿から日付を削除しないよう納得していただければ幸いです。ご意見やご批判はいつでも受け付けています。このトピックに関するあなたのフィードバックを以下のコメントで共有してください。
Suraj Barai
Awesome! I was going to remove the date from comments. But after reading this article. I can understand that we should not remove date..
Thanks.
WPBeginner Support
You’re welcome, glad our post could be informative
管理者
Blair Witkowski
How about author? I use a css code to hide the author in my theme and on client websites because they don’t want a name appearing at the top of the page. For example, my client who is a realtor doesn’t want my name showing on their blog that I am the author. Does this hurt SEO?
WPBeginner Support
It shouldn’t have a major effect on your SEO
管理者
James Early
I understand why dates are important to your readers because you have new info coming out. My blog is about the Bible and I share insights and stories that are more evergreen than what you’re doing. Is there a reason to have the date stamp on my plugs with my kind of content. What would the advantage be? Less than 5% of my posts are related to events or what’s going on in the world. The focus is on a message about a particular Bible story.
Thanks so much
WPBeginner Support
It could be helpful if you mention recent events in your messages but if you feel all of your content would be evergreen then it would be personal preference for the date.
管理者
Robert
Hi, manual removing as well as wp meta and date remover and other plugins don’t work with urls containing date; dates still are in search result. What to do? I don’t want to change permalinks.
Tim D. Hodges
Write down a list of the old dates, Change the permalink, and then get a plug in that redirects the old URLs to the new URLs. Problem solved.
Sunil Kumar
Yes, it’ll be very hectic but this the solution.
Michelle
Hi Syed,
Do you have a plug in for “last updated?” The last time I tried to code something myself I got the white screen of death
Cheers,
Michelle
WPBeginner Support
Hi Michelle,
Please take a look at our guide on how to show last updated date for your posts in WordPress.
管理者
Alexio
With your code the “Last updated on” will show up even on new posts.
I suggest to add this code so it only appears on updated posts:
<time datetime="”>
Yin Teing
Thanks so much for this post! This is so true even in 2017.
Your posts have given me the encouragement not to follow what most blogs are doing today, which is removing dates from their blog posts and the permalinks, then doing 301 redirects.
I’ve maintained a couple of older blogs in which the date is part of the url permalinks. After reading your blog posts, I’ve decided to maintain the permalink structure for my older blogs.
As for the newer blogs that I am setting up, I change the permalink structure not to display the dates, but I’ve included the date in the article.
Like what you mentioned “Bottomline is if you truly value your readers, then you would not remove dates.”….I totally agree with you.
I wish to thank you for all the wonderful tutorials that you have updated on this site.
WPBeginner Support
Hello Yin,
We are glad you fount this article helpful
Don’t forget to join us on Twitter for more WordPress tips and tutorials.
管理者
Taylor
Just FYI: copyblogger.com is using dates now :). All of their stuff is dated (I checked).
Mohd Shabaz
I Have A Software Download Website And I Want To Add A Option When I Update The Post With The New Version Of Software The Post Will Be Published On The Same Date I Update It
Mariilyn Lesniak
I write recipes and want to bring them to my homepage as well as to rss feed. Is there a way to do this without changing the date as a scheduled post and let it republish at a specified future time?
Stephanie
Thanks for this post, very interesting perspective, I appreciate it! I actually found your post because my theme is putting the DATE in the URL! do you have any advice on how I could fix this so it’s just the blog title?
Ahmed
Edit your permalinks. go to Settings > Permalinks. Choose “post name” instead of “date and name”. Save settings
Catherine
Thank you I have installed this code and it shows my post has been updated on today’s date……but my other posts STILL show no dates…..where do I do to turn the date published back on?
Angelo B Hall
Ugh …..
Faith have it so i stumble upon your post about the same thing am looking to resolve .The date and time from my blog . I agree with you about making your own decision on keeping it or not most bloggers have looked over the fact of posts being old but in fact seeing the time stamp is like a memory lane which you wish to remember or like a birth date or a year in which you would love to relive . Sometimes we forget that pleasing everyone is not the best decision … We also often forget the reason we blog .. its not for time and date but for relevant content to help our viewers out or to give them some incite on what they never really thought about . You made my decision clear on keeping it .. & plus lol trying to remove it is harder than , I expected …..
Thanks for the good read
EMB
Perhaps all bloggers have been thinking about this problem.
Every person has the right to choose a suitable model for yourself.
I appreciate your article. It’s a proper thought.
Anthony Attard
One thing to note is that for sites that use Wordpress as an ecommerce site or any site that is not a blog, removing the date is very useful.
Tremi
Thanks for sharing this wonderful post. I also had this thought before. Later I add the data to post just for the sake of adding. But now I realise why dates are important in the blog post.
Sameer Panda
Very helpful. can I just replace the above mentioned code with my original code or what? Please guide me.
Bang Amri
I just thinking to remove date from my articles , cause I think outdated articles is no good for my SEO . also not good looking from visitor viewer when they read articles from date 2005.
nice share bro.
Brian Reich
Personally I think dates in the URL make them harder to share, look sloppy, and make them uneccessarily longer, which could have an SEO effect. So while I’ve used them on my blog since before I knew better, I haven’t used them in a whole and won’t use them going forward.
I agree with you though, the date that the post was last modified is critical. I like what Yoast and others have been doing: actually using their old, outdated content as a resource by updating it and reposting it. It gives readers who might have missed the old content a second chance at reading it, and provides readers that might stumble upon the old content an updated perspective on the article’s topic. It’s very much a win/win approach that I plan on adopting myself!
Raymond Selda
Thanks so much for putting my mind at peace. haha. I’ve already applied this tutorial on my sites.
Prabhudatta Sahoo
Hi There, I need a small help. Right now I am showing last modified date in my blog but even after that while in SERP it still shows my published date. Is there any reason for that? Or how do I change that to show last modified date in SERP as well?
Kelvin
I’m thinking of displaying date on my Blog BUT hiding date from Search engines.
How do I go about this?
Mark
try this if you’re trying to remove the dates from search engines, also worth clearing the cache.
add_filter( ‘wpseo_show_date_in_snippet_preview’, false); //Returning false on this will prevent the date from showing up in the snippet preview.
Mark
ps: add it within the functions.php file of your theme and may be wait till the bots crawl back again or re-submit the sitemap ..hope it helps
add_filter( ‘wpseo_show_date_in_snippet_preview’, false); //Returning false on this will prevent the date from showing up in the snippet preview.
Alfonski
Now I will never remove dates, but I shall update my articles from time to time
Nate
I was thinking of removing dates but only wanted to do so for particular posts that were evergreen. However using a “last updated on” date stamp seems like the perfect solution! Thanks for sharing this great idea.
Gabriel Livan
Thanks for this post guys. I agree that “last updated on” is so much better better than “published on”. I had a feeling about it and you confirmed that. Keep up the good work on WP Beginner!
John
old post I know (the date was on it
)
… I am starting a brand new blog and want to write articles.. back-fill.. posts that should be dated from 2012.. its blog with a story of events. The site is not live so no xml sitemap has been submitted. Eventually the site will have many posts dated from 2012 until 2015.. then I will go live.
Will Google punish me for such behavior?
WPBeginner Staff
Yep, seems like they do show dates now.
James Artre
Out of curiosity, I went and checked over at Copyblogger… and they DO show the dates in their posts.
It could be that they have updated their setting since your last update of this post.
Syed Balkhi
If you’re doing a major rewrite, then sure you can do that. However if it’s minor edits, then it might become annoying for subscribers to keep seeing the old article in their RSS feed or worst in their emails (if you use RSS to email function).
kristl
Whenever I update an article, I actually change the publish date (to the date I updated it), so it moves to the front on my blog, and my subscribers see the new one. Do you see any problem with that?
Brett
If I do a full re-write to improve an old article, and paste the new article over the old one to retain the URL, should the post be marked “no follow” for a period of time to allow search engines to de-index it before allowing them to again follow the post and hopefully rank it higher, or does it not matter that I overwrite the old article and leave it immediately open to search engines?
Allyson Williams
Fabulous info. I update some blog posts annually and have been searching for a way to do this. I am using the Thesis theme. Can you walk me through how to do this for my blog?
WPBeginner Support
We do not offer support for individual WordPress themes and theme frameworks. Please contact your theme’s support, they will be able to help you better.
管理者
Richard
I am TOTALLY baffled by how to go into Wordpress.com and alter any sort of code. I do mean TOTALLY baffled.
I like the idea of “last updated” solution–but I haven’t the foggiest notion of how I could alter the basic
stuff I get with my free Wordpress.com blog site.
My goal is to write a book-form blog about my recent visit to Myanmar aka Burma. I want the posts to be chronological and I am using a static front page and still trying to figure out how to make this all play nicely together.
Please tell me exactly how I would click through my Site Admin or Dashboard or whatever to modify the postings attached to the static front page to show “last updated.”
With gratitude.
Richard
WPBeginner Support
It would be difficult for you if you are using a free blog on WordPress.com. Please see our guide on the difference between WordPress.org vs WordPress.com
管理者
George Almeida
Nice post! I tend to agree with having the date on your posts. I think it helps your readers for sure. One thing I’ve noticed with my blog is that even though I post the published data on all my blog posts, the date never shows up on the Search results. I’m not complaining really, it’s kind of the best of both worlds if you think about it. Anyone who sees one of my posts in their search, only sees the title and the Author but no date. If they click on the link, they will see the post AND the published date. This way, folks may not skip the post simply because it was posted 1 year ago and they do not get lost. It’s a win win. I wish I could tell you how I have this working but I don’t really know. I’m using a hosted WordPress blog. Thanks again for the article!
Jennifer Roberts
Thanks. As a reader I hate it when bloggers remove dates from time-sensitive posts. As a blogger, though, I’ve had some good posts get lost in search results because they weren’t new, even though I had updated them. This sounds like a great solution. I hope it works for me.
João Marcos
How add DATE to dinamic descripition using this code… ?
add_action( ‘wp_head’, ‘gen_meta_desc’ );
function gen_meta_desc()
{
global $post;
if ( ! is_home() )
return;
$meta = strip_tags( $post->post_content );
$meta = str_replace( array( “\\n”, “\\r”, “\\t” ), ‘ ‘, $meta);
$meta = substr( $meta, 0, 125 );
echo “”;
}
Rich Page
Awesome! Finally the solution I was also looking for – I was always wondering whether to remove dates or not for my classic old content – this is the perfect solution! Thanks!
Katiero Porto
It’s really simple! It depends on your niche, style and focus. If your blog is about something that is always changing, you will have to post almost everyday, update the posts sometimes and you can’t remove post dates.
Only those who have some sort of atemporal content, let’s say who are writing things about history or religion, those people can hide dates if they want to because their content is naturally evergreen. It will help the reader today and ten years from now.
So my suggestion is if you want to post less and think about long term you should choose an atemporal topic to blog, not something that changes everyday like internet marketing or wordpress.
Patty Ayers
But nobody wants outdated WordPress information, so WordPress info really *must* be either freshly written *or* evergreen, if it’s to have any value. And it can be.
Bloke
I want outdated Wordpress information.
Lora Y
I totally agree. My blog posts are not in any way time-sensitive, but more philosophical in nature. I don’t see the point in adding dates to these posts. My reason for removing them is so that readers wouldn’t realize how inconsistent I am at posting. Terrible. I know.
bernice
This post is great, thanks for making it. However, I am a real newbie. Where do I put this code?
Thanks again.
WPBeginner Support
In your WordPress theme or a child theme you would replace get_the_date(); or the_time(); line. These lines are usually spread in your templates and display a post’s published date and time.
管理者
bernice
okay, thanks.
Kira
I disagree with this particular viewpoint but still a great article!!
Davide De Maestri
I disagree too
Hayslan
Wow! I was just installing my new blog and thinking in removing the posts dates.
Coincidentally I came here on the blog and at some point I saw the article about “How to Install and Setup W3 Total Cache for Beginners” somewhere and thought, “I’ve read this article before .. is it made another?”. I went to check and saw it was the same article with a difference: updated!
Not enough the article in question, just falling with a parachute here in this article .. let’s face it, awesome and helpful!
You simply rock!
Neeraj Pathania
I wanna ask you about something. I have a wordpress blog and what i do is update each post monthly. So here’s my doubt:” Is there any limit on the number of times any single post can be updated.” I know that the chances of that might be slim to none. But i want to be sure.
Please reply ASAP!
WPBeginner Support
There is no harm in that.
管理者
Jim
Thank you for doing this post, I was actually thinking of getting rid of the dates on my site, and now I know why not to. I see how valuable they truly are, thank you again!!
Ian Thomson
Great post and I agree 100%. I am very pleased you are thinking about the reader. If I can’t find a date I ignore the post and move on as it has limited value without one. I have just left comments with another blogger who proclaims himself a “leading social media marketing and online marketing expert”. He evangelises not using dates and does not accept that all information ages. Oh well.
Naeem
What about the dates in Blogger Urls, like on my blog at
I am thinking of removing the date stamps in URL because they might affect SEO.
What are your views on it?
WPBeginner Support
We don’t use dates in WPBeginner’s URL structure. However, dates in URL can positively affect sites like newspaper sites, journals, other sites where dates are important to the relevancy and context of the content.
管理者
Kenneth von Rauch
Thanks for the post, Syed. What you say makes perfect sense. I just want to add that it still depends on the niche. For example, you can use WordPress as a Welcome site for a brick and mortar company. Such companies still exist and they just want their contact details to be ‘available on the Web”.
That said, I totally agree that in the case of WPBeginner.com, it’s beneficial to display post dates.
As for the code you offer, it works just fine, but you can just install the WP Last Modified plugin that does exactly the same. The advantage is that you won’t have to mess around with any code. The only issue with the plugin is that it does not remove the ‘Posted on’ text. I personally believe the users should have the option to decide whether to keep that text or not.
Dpot
I always prefer the use of date.
Personally it allows me to see in which date I published what!
Thank you
Chiranjeev
Hi,
Finally found the post that cleared my all doubts.
I was confused since long ago regarding Should I show date in search engine or not, But I got the right solution for it. It’s really good idea to update the post date instead off removing it from Google Search or other search engine.
Thanks a lot for detailed information.
Matt
Grammar errors aside, you make some valid points here. FYI – Wikipedia does post a date in their articles. It’s just not very easy to spot. Look in the footer and you’ll find a last modified date and time.
Zimbrul
Coming back here after I did it!
I’m using genesis and I’ve managed to drop the last modified date code using Genesis Simple Edits and a shortcode. Works perfectly and you have the freedom to drop the shortcode at the beginning of the article or at the end. Now, there is a problem. How do I style it to look like the theme’s post info?