Hello Bloggers!

I would like to know if you are showing your post date within your blog post.

I came across several blogs which don’t have the date tag in their post and I wonder why.

Do you have any suggestions and what do you prefer?

Cheers

Nick

@glengorham

Thats exactly my thought and reason why I’m showing the date.But I’m curious about the reasons not showing the date. Maybe there are some benefits I’m not aware of

@richardmclaughlin Definitely a good point there, I also use an addon called retweet that takes old posts and retweets them, doesn’t repost them but it still draws in comments on old threads, that however is a little off Nick’s question.

Content type I can see as the critical thing there. If say you have a recipe blog or something yeah, each holiday system you’ll want to re-post something.

Good comments Mac.

I removed the date on my blog because the articles I post are perennial job search tips that are not tied to any particular time frame. Not including the date makes every article look fresh.

Kathy Bernard
Getajobtips.com

@nickrock if reading something from the news, I do the same as you. but if I am searching how to make the best sugar cookies, how to grow pineapple from the fruit or loads of other things I don’t search by date. If I find something 5 years old, I don’t care. If it appears in Google after 5 years it has to be good.

I show the date my blogpost was published because sometimes, I am using words “today” or “yesterday” in some of my post. So it is not hard for my readers to think of “when was this article published”. It also avoid your readers being confused.

There are good comments here on both side of this issue.  I do use a date at all the blogs I have and the blogs I run for clients.  

Content is the key to keeping an entry “fresh.”  If the content is timeless it won’t matter when it was posted.  Plus, that date does show your activity timeline. Which, if you are a consistent blogger, is good.  If you only post once a month but your content is timely, it is STILL GOOD, no matter when it was posted.

@nickrock @juleswebb I *think* Google can pull your post date from your RSS feed – regardless of what dates you remove off of your website, your RSS feed will update as soon as you publish the post, so that date will always be intact and in the XML encoding of the feed.

@kristi-hines

In January google announced a number of Algorithm Changes. On of them states:

More accurate byline dates. [launch codename “foby”] We made a few improvements to how we determine what date to associate with a document. As a result, you’ll see more accurate dates annotating search results.

Cite:  http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2012/01/30-search-quality-highlights-with.html

Of course we don’t know how they are doing it, but I kind of doubt it’s from rss feeds because those can be manipulated by the developer. Same deal with meta data, which is also why they don’t rely on meta data for location verification either.  

 @nickrock I would agree that the benefit of dates is strictly for the user experience. 

The date of my blog posts are relevant because it is a piece of information that is just convient to have. For instance if you are doing a series then the date would be relevant if you wanted to find Mondays post. .adslot-overlay {position: absolute; font-family: arial, sans-serif; background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.65); border: 2px solid rgba(0,0,0,0.65); color: white !important; margin: 0; z-index: 2147483647; text-decoration: none; box-sizing: border-box; text-align: left;}.adslot-overlay-iframed {top: 0; left: 0; right: 0; bottom: 0;}.slotname {position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; right: 0; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; padding: 3px 0 3px 6px; vertical-align: middle; background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.45); text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; overflow: hidden;}.slotname span {text-align: left; text-decoration: none; text-transform: capitalize;}.revenue {position: absolute; bottom: 0; left: 0; right: 0; font-size: 11px; padding: 3px 0 3px 6px; vertial-align: middle; text-align: left; background-color: rgba(0,0,0,0.45); font-weight: bold; text-overflow: ellipsis; overflow: hidden; white-space: nowrap;}.revenue .name {color: #ccc;}.revenue .horizontal .metric {display: inline-block; padding-right: 1.5em;}.revenue .horizontal .name {padding-right: 0.5em;}.revenue .vertical .metric {display: block; line-height: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em;}.revenue .vertical .name, .revenue .vertical .value {display: block;}.revenue .square .metric, .revenue .button .metric {display: table-row;}.revenue .square .metric {line-height: 1.5em;}.revenue .square .name, .revenue .square .value, .revenue .button .value {display: table-cell;}.revenue .square .name {padding-right: 1.5em;}.revenue .button .name {display: block; margin-right: 0.5em; width: 1em; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: clip;}.revenue .button .name:first-letter {margin-right: 1.5em;}a.adslot-overlay:hover {border: 2px solid rgba(58,106,173,0.9);}a.adslot-overlay:hover .slotname {border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(81,132,210,0.9); background-color: rgba(58,106,173,0.9);}a.adslot-overlay:hover .revenue {border-top: 1px solid rgba(81,132,210,0.9); background-color: rgba(58,106,173,0.9);}div.adslot-overlay:hover {cursor: not-allowed; border: 2px solid rgba(64,64,64,0.9);}div.adslot-overlay:hover .slotname {border-bottom: 1px solid rgba(128,128,128,0.9); background-color: rgba(64,64,64,0.9);}div.adslot-overlay:hover .revenue {border-top: 1px solid rgba(128,128,128,0.9); background-color: rgba(64,64,64,0.9);}

@atlantarobin I’m not familiar with any plugin that can do what you’re describing, but wordpress is the not the main software I work with and others may be more familiar with what’s out there.

I think that “timeless” posts are accessed through search results or social sharing. I’m not sure how much these type of entries are found through some category style navigation—unless of course you set up a category for posts that are not time sensitive.

I’m curious to see if others have some ideas on this.

Cheers!
Jules