I've been doing a site audit over the last few days and something that has been driving me mad is seeing a date from 2014 attached to the snippet for the homepage in the serps.
I'd checked all the usual suspects, lastmod date in sitemaps, server headers, blog posts linked from homepage etc and then found today that there is apparently a bug going on that is showing a date in the snippet for the upload date of an embedded youtube video on the page. Apparently a lot of people are having this problem.
Sure enough the page in question had a youtube video on the homepage who's upload date exactly matched that of the 2014 date shown in the snippet.
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-snippet-date-wrong-22986.html
Just thought I'd give a heads up in-case anyone else here is having the same problem. Also big up to Jennifer Slegg for spotting it!
You are absolutely right.
Easy for me to see because I'm looking at a site that launched in 2016, so I did a search likely to find a page with a video embed, and sure enough, 2015 dates popped up. Not possible on this site. I checked, and just as you predicted, the embedded video was uploaded on the exact date that shows in the SERPS.
Excuse me Google, but WTF! The video isn't even a major element on the page and isn't above the fold for 99.9% of users (there's probably someone out there with a huge monitor).
Interesting. Had the same issue wíth a client recently. The culprit was an old linked blog post that forced the old date snippet.
So, be ware what you link to from a page..
Raz, are you saying that content that was simply linked to, not embedded in any way, was causing this?
I don't understand how that is even possible... wouldn't it be happening all the time then? In other words, what made this link and its content different
@ergophobe
Yeah, That seems to be pretty much it. Kinda kicking myself that I whilst I checked all internal links I didn't check external resources for related dates. As I said it seems to be a bug and hopefully one they will fix soon but definitely something I'll be adding to my checklist in future.
@Rumbas So it was just a blog post in your case? Is that issue still live now? I checked blog posts as mentioned above and they were all clear but if blog posts are also causing it I should probably check some other sites as well...
Both, have you seen any ranking flux as a result of the date in snippet? a lot of people are saying it shouldn't be an issue rankings wise but have been seeing massive fluctuations in this sites rankings.
Yes, exactly.
They linked from a post in the bottom to related posts. Those related posts are 2 years old, but the linking new post got the old date snippet. However the date is actually on the page and, in fact, is also one of the anchor texts linking the old post.
Quote from: Rumbas on November 17, 2016, 07:50:06 AM
the date is actually on the page
Ah! That makes sense. I wouldn't even call that a "bug" so much as a deficiency in the algorithm that shows how rudimentary Google's understanding of content still is.
Linking from the page to an internal article with old dates I could understand if not agree with as a cause but taking the date of an external resource and for a homepage in particular. As ergophobe succinctly put it, WTF!?!
Apparently they don't currently have an ETA for fixing the youtube date thing so will be testing some fixes and will feedback on how resolving it goes :)