Google’s John Mueller spoke a bit extra about when you need to replace the date within the lastmod tag within the XML sitemap file. He mentioned on Twitter in case you are “offering one thing new for engines like google that you just’d like mirrored in search,” then replace the date, if not, then do not.
John mentioned, “Are you offering one thing new for engines like google that you just’d like mirrored in search? In that case, flag it. In the event you’re simply altering the timestamp within the footer, certain the web page has technically modified too, however ought to that be prioritized — most likely not.”
Listed here are these tweets:
Are you offering one thing new for engines like google that you just’d like mirrored in search? In that case, flag it. In the event you’re simply altering the timestamp within the footer, certain the web page has technically modified too, however ought to that be prioritized — most likely not.
— johnmu is just not a chatbot but 🐀 (@JohnMu) February 24, 2023
John added, “The difficulty is extra that some CMS’s / servers set the lastmod to the present date/time for all pages. This makes that information ineffective. Good CMS’s setting it thoughtfully, even when not at all times excellent, is way more helpful.”
As a reminder, in 2015 Google mentioned they do not actually use the lastmod date however then modified that in 2020 they mentioned they do. The present Google documentation says, “Google makes use of the lastmod worth if it is constantly and verifiably (for instance by evaluating to the final modification of the web page) correct.”
Microsoft Bing lately mentioned the lastmod date is crucial and supplied tremendous helpful stats on how individuals replace the date:
- 58% of hosts have a minimum of one XML sitemap.
- 84% of those sitemaps have a lastmod attribute set.
- 79% have lastmod values right.
- 18% have lastmod values not accurately set.
- 3% has lastmod values for less than a few of the URLs.
- 16% of those sitemaps haven’t got a lastmod attribute set.
- 42% of hosts don’t have one XML sitemap
Discussion board dialogue at Twitter.
