"Page Info" in Firefox

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Remember: sitemap generation is automatic. In this case, the <lastmod> attribute, which shows the date of the last page update, may be incorrect.

"Page Info" in Firefox

In the screenshot below, we see that the meta tags did not give us any information about the creation date. The date in the "Last modified" line, according to the server, shows when changes were made to the resource. Thus, on large sites like Facebook*, the date and time of the last visit to the page will be equal to the date and time at&t email list of the last changes to the site.


It looks like the page has been modified, but it hasn't:

Firefox

In this case, Firefox shows more up-to-date information from the page. Google still shows 2017.

Tracking by picture publication date

It is not always possible to determine the date of page creation by the date of the pictures. Pictures may be closed for indexing. Often, other people's content is also posted on the pages. In this case, it will be impossible to determine the correct age.

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The date when the image was published can be determined using a saved copy of the page. However, we do not recommend using this method. Google saves the page after it is scanned by a bot. Large sites with huge traffic will have young pages, although in fact this is not the case. Yandex has another problem: an old copy of the page may be saved, which has long since ceased to correspond to reality.

Tracking by image publication date

As you can see from the screenshot, the age of the Facebook page* is significantly different from the date shown to us by the "Site:" operator.

Is it worth using Yandex's "date:" operator to determine the age of a website page?
The site will be indexed if no information about the last modification of the document (Last-Modified) is received. In this case, do not forget to take into account some points:

dates will not be indicated on the website pages;

Users will not be able to find the site when sorting by date;

the Yandex robot will not receive complete and reliable information about the indexation of pages and their last update. Since the robot cannot get all the pages of the site at once, pages with updates will be indexed by it less often.

The SEO specialist pays special attention to point three. We get a competent explanation of the contradictions in the use of the "date:" operator, paying attention to the first two points presented above.

Let's take a closer look.

Using the "date:" operator, Yandex's search engine works to find the last date the page was modified. The problem occurs if the Last-Modified HTTP header has not been set correctly. In this case, it is impossible to perform the operation, since the robot does not have the ability to monitor the Internet every second.

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Dmitry Svistunov
Head of SEO and Development
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Yandex will display the date when the page was first indexed if Last-Modified is not functioning. The re-indexing date may be displayed if, perhaps, the site mirrors were merged incorrectly or the pages dropped out of the index. These are just a few of the possible reasons.

Let's sum it up:

You can use "date:" to search pages by the date of the last changes. In our case, almost 85% of the site pages do not have information about the last modification. In such a situation, Yandex will not be able to display dates correctly.

Properly used Last-Modified header will help to correctly display the page date in the "date:" operator. The header will also be used for modtime.

The formation of the "date:" and modtime operators occurs differently, but officially they have almost the same description. There is an explanation for this: updated data does not immediately appear in Yandex.xml.

When analyzing certain URLs, it is important to remember that they may have a Last-Modified header. If this header was present or present in the past, then "date:" will not help determine the exact date of the first indexation.

One of the most important points. To determine the exact age of a website page, you cannot 100% trust the "date:" operator as a correct identifier, taking into account the "older is better" principle when sorting in search results. Otherwise, pages with Last-Modified headers, based on the recommendations given by Yandex, would be ranked worse. To summarize, we can say that the page age by the "date:" operator is more like a technical parameter.

The point above can only be taken into account for pages that do not have a Last-Modified header. Of course, there is a strong connection between "date:" and Last-Modified. However, this does not mean that search results using the "date:" operator are independent of other factors.

Correctly setting the Last-Modified header will help to conduct accelerated indexing in Yandex, as well as improve positions when using advanced network search. This happens when the user is looking for new content (promotions, events, latest news). Unfortunately, website owners and SEO specialists do not always use this opportunity.