Google Still Working On Getting Date Timestamps Accurate In Search Results

Google is still working on getting the timestamps accurate in the search results and news search results. Several publishers, including the Director of SEO at USA Today and the SEO Editor for Wall Street Journal, complained about the inaccurate timestamps in Google Search the other day.

In which, Danny Sullivan from Google replied that he thinks the Google Search team is looking into these issues.

Kyle Sutton the Director of SEO at USA Today said on Twitter “Google… between on-page update times and article structured markup, you should have all the data you need to show fresh timestamps. Why can’t you keep up? You’re crawling often. Users think we’re not current when we are.”

Will Flannigan the SEO Editor for the Wall Street Journal also chimed in saying “FWIW we’re experiencing time stamp issues as well. Sometimes seeing “4 days ago” on stories published less than 4 hours ago. It’s frustrating. I found asking for a recrawl sometimes works.”

Here are those tweets:

FWIW we’re experiencing time stamp issues as well. Sometimes seeing “4 days ago” on stories published less than 4 hours ago. It’s frustrating. I found asking for a recrawl sometimes works.

— Will Flannigan ???? (@Will_Flannigan) October 6, 2022

I also spoke with several other publishers, off the record, about this and they confirmed their frustrations with this Google Search issue.

Danny Sullivan from Google replied saying “I’ll pass it on. I think we’ve been looking at this. Appreciate it can be frustrating. It’s more complicated than it might seem when it comes to dates, but we’ll work on it.”

I’ll pass it on. I think we’ve been looking at this. Appreciate it can be frustrating. It’s more complicated than it might seem when it comes to dates, but we’ll work on it.

— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) October 6, 2022

This has been something Danny said also back in 2018 around dates and timestamps in the search results. It is an ongoing issue that Google Search continues to somewhat struggle with.

Forum discussion at Twitter.