Remove Date Stamps on SERP for Better SEO
In recent years, Google has changed algorithm almost completely. It has implemented lots of new things and kicked out lots of past things. After panda update and penguin updates, lots of blog’s traffic was down and few of them has recovered it’s traffic back, while some of them have not. In 2013, Google has enrolled around 17 new algorithm changes and in 2014, after Page Layout update from Google, bloggers are waiting for new update to survive in the competition. Recently I found that there is date listed on search engine results page. Actually I have been seeing it since long but noticed it for the first time, while I think about SEO for my blog.
I have observed that few of blogs having date stamps while few of them have not. Well, that might because Google is fetching that details either from your blog’s sitemap, or from your blog post meta description or somewhere else. After panda update, most of the blog penalized for the reason is showing dates in SERP. The same thing happened to lots of old blogs. If you search for
” block pirate bay porn ” it would show you results for so many blogs including blogpost published in past year, even a year before last year like 2012 post , 2013 post with the same titles.
Mostly Search Engine Loves fresh content, so it would love to saw fresh content published or updated recently rather than showing old posts from 2008 or 2012 year. Updated posts would contains more and updated information and hence you should write evergreen content.
Another thing is from user side. If you are searching for something on search engine, you would probably choose the one with latest date. Not choose the post from previous year because you are looking for fresh details. That would decrease the incoming organic traffic to your old post. You can drive traffic to your old post using this SEO tips.
How to remove Date Stamps on SERP :
Method 1 : Using WordPress Plugin to Date Stamps on SERP
Date Exclusion SEO WordPress Plugin do this quite easy for you. Just install the Date Exclusion SEO WordPress Plugin & set it as shown in the image.This plugin would turns off date information after a specified number of days or immediately. It would also of removing dates from Category/Tag/Front Pages individually & you can assign Alt text to the same.
Well, this plugin is no longer maintained by plugin author, so it might be incompatible with WordPress version you are using. I have installed it and it worked for me perfectly, but if any incompatibility issue is there you would not able to receive support from the plugin owner. So I would not recommend the same to remove Date Stamps on SERP .
Method 2 : Using JavaScript instead of php code to remove Date Stamps on SERP
Generally php code in your WordPress theme is like below that shows date stamps to your posts. You can find the same code from your post archives, single.php and homepage. I would recommend you to take backup of those files before you update them. So you can later revert back changes if there is any issue with it.
<?php the_time(‘F jS, Y’) ?>
Method 3 : Using function.php file to remove Date Stamps on SERP
If you’re looking for a quick fix, just login to your WordPress dasbhoard & go to “Appearance > Editor”. Find function.php file to modify. Now add below code to your theme’s functions.php file. Put it at the top of the file, but after the opening <?php line.(Via : johnlamansky>
function jl_remove_post_dates() {
add_filter('the_date', '__return_false');
add_filter('the_time', '__return_false');
add_filter('the_modified_date', '__return_false');
} add_action('loop_start', 'jl_remove_post_dates');
If this above code not worked for you, try the below code that is more aggressive than earlier one.
function jl_remove_post_dates() {
add_filter('the_date', '__return_false');
add_filter('the_time', '__return_false');
add_filter('the_modified_date', '__return_false');
add_filter('get_the_date', '__return_false');
add_filter('get_the_time', '__return_false');
add_filter('get_the_modified_date', '__return_false');
} add_action('loop_start', 'jl_remove_post_dates');
Feel free to let me know your views on the above methods.