Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI
      Moz Local

      Let your reputation grow with Reviews AI

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Blog article URL - with or without date?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Blog article URL - with or without date?

    Technical SEO
    5
    6
    9110
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • onurkiyak
      onurkiyak last edited by

      Quick question to all you folks: does including the date in a blog article's permalink affect rankings? For example, here's an article with the month and year, as well as the blog title: http://www.ayzanyc.com/blog/2012/12/difference-between-hot-chocolate-hot-cocoa/

      Is it better to omit the date and just put the blog title?

      Also, if is better to avoid using the date, is it worth it to change the link structure of our previous articles (given that the URL will now be different), or should we just focus on future articles?

      Thanks ahead of time for your advice.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Dino64
        Dino64 Subscriber last edited by

        @Paul  "I always include the publish date in the post itself because little frustrates me more than not being able to tell whether an article's recommendations are current or not."

        WORD

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • David_ODonnell
          David_ODonnell @ThompsonPaul last edited by

          Just wanted to chime in and agree with the suggestion of leaving the post publish date within the post content. That is also a source of frustration for me!

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • ThompsonPaul
            ThompsonPaul last edited by

            I'm with  David that the dates in the URL structure aren't really beneficial and could actually be harmful unless you're a news site of some sort.

            I always include the publish date in the post itself because little frustrates me more than not being able to tell whether an article's recommendations are current or not, but don't see any reason to emphasise the date in the URL.

            According to top WordPress SEO Joost deValk, the presence of the dates in URLs can hurt clickthrough rates from the SERPs as well.

            Because you're on WordPress, it would be quite difficult to change URLs only for new posts .Because it's templated, making the URL structure change is going to affect all posts. Which means it's imperative that you implement a redirect for all the old posts when you update to the new URLs.

            Fortunately, this is a snap to do as Yoast has written a little web-app to help you create the redirect automatically without needing to know anything about the code.

            He's written a post about the why's which further answer your question, and includes a link to the tool he built to create the necessary redirect. http://yoast.com/change-wordpress-permalink-structure/

            Hope that helps?

            Paul

            David_ODonnell 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • SoftzSolutions
              SoftzSolutions last edited by

              It depends on the type of content you are writing. For say, if you are covering news articles, it would be better if you mention the date in the URL: as also in the article, somewhere.

              But if the articles are basically ever green content, you should be better off with dates.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
              • David_ODonnell
                David_ODonnell last edited by

                Personally, I would omit the date. It unnecessarily lengthens / add folder structure to the URLs.

                I also prefer removing the trailing slash at the end of the URL.

                It's your call whether or not you change the existing URLs, be mindful to implement a 301 redirect if you go down that route.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                • 1 / 1
                • First post
                  Last post

                Got a burning SEO question?

                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                Start my free trial


                Browse Questions

                Explore more categories

                • Moz Tools

                  Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

                • SEO Tactics

                  Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

                • Community

                  Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

                • Digital Marketing

                  Chat about tactics outside of SEO

                • Research & Trends

                  Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

                • Support

                  Connect on product support and feature requests.

                • See all categories

                Related Questions

                • Katarina-Borovska

                  SEO - New URL structure

                  Hi, Currently we have the following url structure for all pages, regardless of the hierarchy: domain.co.uk/page, such as domain/blog name. Can you, please confirm the following: 1. What is the benefit of organising the pages as a hierarchy, i.e. domain/features/feature-name or domain/industries/industry-name or domain/blog/blog name etc. 2. This will create too many 301s - what is Google's tolerance of redirects? Is it worth for us changing the url structure or would you only recommend to add breadcrumbs? Many thanks Katarina

                  Technical SEO | | Katarina-Borovska
                  1
                • lfrazer123

                  Folders in url structure?

                  Hello, Revamping an out-of-date website and am wondering if I need to include the folders (categories) in the url structure? The proposed structure has 8 main folders. I've been reading that Google is ok if the folder is not included in the url, but is it really? The hesitation I have is that the urls are getting long and the main folder only has only a sub folder beneath it. So, /folder-name/facility-name/treatment-overview. This looks too long, doesn't it? Thanks!

                  Technical SEO | | lfrazer123
                  0
                • AL123al

                  Size of image for article Schema

                  Hi, I implemented schema markup for an article and all tested fine and I can see it being fired in preview mode of Google Tag Manager. But when I run the URL which has it applied through Google Structured Testing tool it is not appearing. I have now read that the image needs to be a certain size. For AMP articles this appears to be 12oo pixels wide http://www.thesempost.com/google-changes-image-size-requirements-amp-articles/ But what about non-AMP articles? Does it need to be that big too?

                  Technical SEO | | AL123al
                  0
                • Rich-DC

                  Date in permalinks. Bad?

                  Hello! I have a recipe website with over 1000 posts. Currently I have the month and year in the permalink that everyone is hinting off to me is bad. On the same front people tell me if I change the permalinks to just the post name it's going to significantly slow down my site. I'm torn on this one about changing. From Google's standpoint is it better to change to the post name and if so should I be fearing I'm going to run into trouble with the change? Any suggestions you have would be appreciated. Thanks!!!

                  Technical SEO | | Rich-DC
                  1
                • ennovators

                  URL path randomly changing

                  Hi eveyone, got a quick question about URL structures: I'm currently working in ecommerce with a site that has hundreds of products that can be accessed through different URL paths: 1)www.domain.com/productx 2)www.domain.com/category/productx 3)www.domain.com/category/subcategory/productx 4)www.domain.com/bestsellers/productx 5)... In order to get rid of dublicate content issues, the canoncial tag has been installed on all the pages required. The problem I'm witnessing now is the following: If a visitor comes to the site and navigates to the product through example 2) at time the URL shown in the URL browser box is example 4), sometimes example 1) or whatever. So it is constantly changing. Does anyone know, why this happens and if it has any impact on GA tracking or even on SEO peformance. Any reply is much appreciated Thanks you

                  Technical SEO | | ennovators
                  0
                • inhouseninja

                  Will Adding Publish Date at end of Page Title for Blog posts Hurt SEO?

                  I'd like to be able to easily track blog posts by month but in Google reports when you set a date range obviously older blog post still appear and with amount of blog posts we generate without seeing the date in the title it's not obvious what was published and when it was published. For example if a Blog Title was "/dangers-of-sharing-KM-knowledge-01-11-15 would it hurt SEO? The reason is I'd like to have a quick way to know how new posts do each month compared to older content

                  Technical SEO | | inhouseninja
                  0
                • JustinStupid

                  Should me URLs be uppercase or lowercase

                  I'm in the middle of doing a bunch of 301 redirects for me site. Should I make them Lowercase, uppercase, or does it matter? Also, do I want to be using hyphens (-), or underscores (_)? Any other tips? EX: http://www.stupid.com/golf-slippers.html OR http://www.stupid.com/Golf-Slippers.html

                  Technical SEO | | JustinStupid
                  0
                • MarloSchneider

                  How to move my blog from subdomain to subfolder?

                  Not an unusual situation, I have a blog on blog.domain.com it has quite a few blog postings.  The platform is old and will be scrapped, but the blog content itself is going to be moved to domain.com/blog. The current process is we are manually listing all linked to/content pages and we are going to 301 redirect them to their counterparts on the new blog.  This is going to be a tedious process. A) Is there any way to automate the moving of the blog? B) What is the best way to do the massive 301 redirect, php headers, .htaccess?  Should we move the individual pages with redirects, or redirect the domain in the .htaccess (this will be very difficult to match all the titles and file structure)?

                  Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider
                  0

                Get started with Moz Pro!

                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                Start my free trial
                Products
                • Moz Pro
                • Moz Local
                • Moz API
                • Moz Data
                • STAT
                • Product Updates
                Moz Solutions
                • SMB Solutions
                • Agency Solutions
                • Enterprise Solutions
                • Digital Marketers
                Free SEO Tools
                • Domain Authority Checker
                • Link Explorer
                • Keyword Explorer
                • Competitive Research
                • Brand Authority Checker
                • Local Citation Checker
                • MozBar Extension
                • MozCast
                Resources
                • Blog
                • SEO Learning Center
                • Help Hub
                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                • How-to Guides
                • Moz Academy
                • API Docs
                About Moz
                • About
                • Team
                • Careers
                • Contact
                Why Moz
                • Case Studies
                • Testimonials
                Get Involved
                • Become an Affiliate
                • MozCon
                • Webinars
                • Practical Marketer Series
                • MozPod
                Connect with us

                Contact the Help team

                Join our newsletter
                Moz logo
                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                • Accessibility
                • Terms of Use
                • Privacy

                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.