More and more bloggers are removing the dates from their blog posts. This post explains some of the reasons why they are doing it and whether or not you should do the same, based on my own experiments.
remove blog post date
I have just spent 30 days testing and measuring what happened, when I removed the dates from my posts. I can confirm the results have been very interesting and potentially extremely valuable too. So, let’s get started.
Removing dates from your blog posts: Why bother?
It started with me asking Brian Clark and Sonia Simone from copyblogger, if they would add dates to their posts. Posts on copyblogger have no date; either in the post itself or in the URL. So, if you land on a page on copyblogger via a search engine or a social media link / bookmark, you have no idea if the information you are reading is 5 minutes old or 5 years old. To get an idea of the date, you need to scroll down to the comments section and see when the first comment was left.
A number of people agreed with me, that dates were useful. However, Brian and Sonia don’t just play around with copyblogger. I knew there was a slight SEO benefit to removing post dates, but not much. There had to be a far better reason why they were leaving the dates out, so I decided to remove the dates from the posts on this blog for a month, and measure the results.
I quickly received some amazing feedback!
More shares and more comments
I quickly noticed posts getting shared more often on social networks. It seems people look at the date of a blog post before determining if it’s recent enough to read, share or comment on.
It appears that the date then acts as a filter, with each person having a different threshold. So, some people may not bother reading a post that’s more than a week old, others may have a 6 month threshold, whilst others will be fine with posts that are years old. If the date is not there, it seems more people start reading the posts and then make their mind up, based on the value of the content rather than the date it was published.
In short, well written, older posts started getting shared, “liked” and retweeted a lot more often.
With Google and Bing both using signals from social networks as part of their algorithm, any extra shares, likes and social bookmarks are of real value.
Lower bounce rates
Immediately, people started reading more posts on each visit to the site. The bounce rate dropped from 74% to 59% over that 4 week period; starting on day one! Although 4 weeks is a smaller dataset than I would use when working with a client, a consistent drop, day on day for 30 days, is relevant.
In addition, as the bounce rate dropped the same day the date was removed, and stayed down every day thereafter; I believe there’s a real link between the number of posts a person reads as they navigate through this site, and those posts having a date on them.
I will keep you updated with my results over the coming months, as 30 days is still a relatively short test period.
Dates in blog posts: No one rule applies
blog post datesIf you are considering doing something similar with your blog, this is not a universally good idea. Those date filters I mentioned earlier are there for a good reason; they stop people reading out of date information and believing it’s current. The dates really matter, if your blog is in a time sensitive niche, such as; news, politics, technology, automotive, fashion, music, sport, gadgets, ect.
But for blogs that provide evergreen content on less time specific topics, such as; marketing, personal development, cookery, copywriting, body language, yoga, crafting, martial arts etc, the post dates are far less important. A 5 year old post can be just as relevant and valuable, as a 5 minute old post. For example, many of Seth Godin’s oldest posts are also his best, most relevant insights; even though he wrote them 6 or more years ago.
Date free with a caveat
I have decided to carry on without dates on posts here for now, but with an important caveat.
Any posts that reference time sensitive data, will have the date included in the actual post copy. For example, at the time of writing this, Facebook has 750million users. That number will increase, or maybe even decrease, over the coming weeks and months. So, if I were to mention it, I would say that as of June 2011, Facebook has 750million users: Rather than just quote the number. I will also be leaving dates visible in the comments section, so anyone can scroll down and see when the posts were published.
This blog is still fairly new, so it’s easy to adopt the date free approach from here on. It’s a harder job on more established blogs. For example, I will not be removing the dates from Jim’s Marketing Blog, as much of the content there would need rewriting, re editing and there are close on a thousand posts there.
Dates on blog posts: Your thoughts
I’d like to know what you think about dates in posts. If you read my original post about removing dates from blog posts, you will see very clearly that I was initially against it. Now, I see definite benefits for bloggers in certain niches.
What are your thoughts?
A great post and some interesting findings too. I’m loving the new blog .
Keep ‘em coming.
Thanks for the kind words, Keith!
I use Blogger for my blog. For the most part my content is evergreen so I removed the dates. My husband uses WordPress.com, and I could not find a place to opt out of using the date. Do you know how to do this with that service?
Dannye
says:
Hi Dannye.
That’s a good question. The ability to remove the date form a post on WordPress, is determined by the blog theme you are using. I use the amazing Headway WordPress Theme from , which allows you to remove the dates in seconds.
You can remove the date of a post from the URL using any version of WordPress, by going to:
Dashboard >> Settings>> Permalinks: And then choosing a permalink setting that excludes the date.
One word of warning here. If you change the permalink settings, external links to your posts and pages will no longer work. You would then need to set up what are caled “303 redirects”. Also, changing the permalink settings will not stop the date of the posts being displayed in the post itself.
Hope that helps, Dannye.
Very interesting results! My initial instinct is that I like dates on posts, but your findings make sense. Great info for all bloggers to keep in mind!
Hi Kaley.
It’s good to have a choice and to have an idea what to expect, if you remove the dates.
I’m curious to see if more bloggers will be making the choice you did or if they’ll stick with the more newspaper-like dated entries.
Newspaper-like works for news related sites.
Very interesting comment about evergreen content – many of my blog posts and articles are still relevant whether I wrote them this week or several years ago. Fewer of my business blog posts are date sensitive.
Your month’s experiment has shown interesting results – will watch this space.
Great info as ever Amzing.
Hi Clare.
A huge amount of business related content is potentially evergreen, because although the tools may change over the years, the fundamentals have been around for decades or longer. With what seems to be a clear benefit from removing post dates, there’s a strong argument for evergreen content producers to consider removing the dates.
The reality is that for many blogs, the fact they are published in date order is irrelevant to the value of the content. A book, written over a number of years would look daft, if it was published in date order; rather than in logical order,
Thanks for the comment.
Hi AMZing
Really great post, and thank you for sharing your experiment.
For me it raises another issue. I believe we can’t help but judge others and when we land a blog where there are few posts or nothing has been posted for months we make a judgement. By taking the date away, I guess we removing some of that judgement!
I still can’t help raising my eyebrows at a “social media guru” who hasn’t tweeted for several days and hasn’t blogged for weeks!
Hi Nicky
The Internet is littered with blogs that are seldom updated. If the posts still have value, then they deserve to be read. However, people are very unlikely to keep returning, when they see nothing fresh from week to week.
Thanks for the feedback my friend!
Again. This is why I come here to your sites.
Always thinking aloud and I benefit from that.
Thanks Jim
Billy
Thanks Billy. Always good to get that kind of feedback, sir.
As you mentioned, it’s really about the blog content. If it’s about general information that’s not time sensitive, it might not be necessary. If it’s going to have such a dramatic effect on bounce rate and social sharing, maybe it’s a good strategy to look into. It also might work well for bloggers that just don’t have the time to blog consistently.
Such a simple idea — and such a good one!
I’m one of those oddballs who writes blog articles not to promote myself as much as to genuinely share information I think people will benefit from. Therefore, I don’t post every day, every week, or even every month. If I have nothing important to say, I don’t say it
On the other hand, I have suspected that people don’t want to read “old” news. And on the other hand, there are always “new” readers who could glean something useful.
A long way of saying that I’m going to remove my dates right now!
Thanks!!!
Hi Sara.
Thanks for the feedback. Let me know what happens!
Thanks AMZing for sharing your results. I am working on a new blog and will keep this in mind.
It’s just another option, Andrea. I’m guessing it will work better for some and less well for others.
Great findings! I used to remove the date filter for some of my clients, where it didn’t play any additional role and was hoping for a small seo boost.
Thank you for the post, really helpful!
Angel
You’re extremely welcome, Angel!
Very interesting. It seems to me there is a bit of dichotomy between what is best for the publisher and optimum usability for the reader. As a publisher, the metrics for date removal seem compelling, but it does seem as if removing dates deletes information that is meaningful to readers.
Hi Randy.
Excellent point! In my experience, it has to work for the reader otherwise it can’t work for the publisher.
If readers don’t like it, they won’t read it. Equally, the publisher has to be careful that their content truly does not need a date, before they even consider doing this. I also think that leaving the dates visible on the comments is a real help. For example, anyone reading this post can see the day it was published simply by looking at the date of the initial comments.
How do you remove them from blogger?
I have more of a personal memoir blog, and I feel like some really good posts from early on are getting buried. So glad there’s a way to keep them on life support.
Very interesting! I’ve been thinking I should remove dates from one of the sites I administer and now it’s nice to have some “hard data” to support the idea.
Very interesting insights here! Thanks for sharing the analysis. I’ve often wondered if removing dates from my blog would boost its shareability over time. I’m also thinking people may be more likely to link to posts that don’t seem outdated as well.
Do you think there’s much SEO benefit other than the boost in shares and likes?
Hi Tiffany.
The fact you get more shares and likes, WILL improve your SEO by itself; as these signals are now used by Google as part of their ranking process.
While I understand these advantages, I have to say that, when I’m doing research, I often ignore posts without dates. I don’t need thinking from 2007 on much of the time-sensitive research I conduct, and the date lets me know that recent changes and newer channels have been factored into the post, and that it’s informed by more recent thinking and discussion. Imagine going through a newspaper morgue without being able to see when an article was written.
Your point is solid, Shel. This post, however, relates to NON time specific information; what we call evergreen content. As the post says, this is not a serious option for anyone in news. Anyone stupid enough to write a news blog without dates, is unlikely to have anything worth your valuable research time.
[...] especially if it’s surrounded by results with current dates or listings with no dates.So by removing the date on your posts (or running a script that does it automatically), you’ll increase your search [...]
Hello AMZing Marketing,
Very interesting read! I can see where this would be very valuable for content that doesn’t become outdated in short periods of time. I’m almost tempted to try it on my music blog, but I don’t think it would reap the benefits, as music news and press releases do go stale in shorter periods of time than other articles such as reviews and free (and legal) downloads.
I guess what I would do is break it down based on category within WordPress, the CMS that I use, and have the date posted on more time sensitive categories and not posted on the reviews, downloads, etc.
How do you think the mixture of the two would work? I’m eager to give it a try to breathe some life into past reviews I’ve written…
Great information Jim. This is perfect for a blog I maintain for a local dentist. All of his content is evergreen. If social interaction will increase even just a small amount…it’s worth it. Thank You.
Very interesting – as we know more social shares and longer time spent on site is a SEO signal as well. I have a mixture of evergreen content and some aging content (think Facebook), as a service to my readers if I remove the dates I would have to annotate those FB posts or clearly mark them as archived in some way.
Well that is right. I came here to check that if I quit adding dates to my posts then would there be any adverse effects on my SEO. But here I came to know about new ideas. It is a fact that if I am reader and want to read some technical iPhone tutorial, I will never read 4 years old post. Rather I will always prefer a new post.
I agree with your blog post Jim. However, I think dates should not be omitted cause Google likes fresh content.
Users as well
I agree with your post. Blogs such as news feeds absolutely need to have the dates, but if the information you are providing in your posts is not time sensitive then it would make sense to remove the dates. I have been considering removing the dates on my blog but after seeing your positive results, I am sold. Thanks.
Do you know I had a hunch that removing dates from posts could be a good idea to do. Not even sure why it sprung to mind today but they say some things happen for a reason don’t they?
Anyway .. as you found out removing dates is a great and idea ( and of course problogger does set us all a good example too) then it’s on with the show to get those dates removed from my site (which is a wordpress theme). I’ve always disliked the dates showing in my sidebar of featured author posts.
Thanks for the insight Jim
Thanks for the info
It is really working
I refuse to read any blog without a date on it. If the writer is unwilling to support his/her work by recording the date on it then it is not worth reading.
[...] post linked to a post that Jim Connolly did (which I found before reading Shel’s post) where Jim actually experimented with removing [...]
This is a good article, and it is obvious that are two types of content, the evergreen like recipes, toys, etc, and the more news filled sites.
I am moving to wordpress and am frustrated by the dates, and it is harder for me to do a large site quickly. So I am have all the diary entries done neatly by month and date, and want to have a list of them by article title as well, catchy titles like small ads, and see if this looks okay.
Two ways of organizing so the good articles do not get ignored a few months from now.
Think of books in the library as a metaphor.
Most readers visiting a site will be interested in knowing whether the site is updated or not.That is where the date of the post starts looking good..However there are a lot of sites which are doing well without date,time stamps…In the end it all depends upon the audience of the site..News related sites have little choice in this debate.