Google Published Date - Does Google Lie?

[AndreVanKets]

Here's the scenario.

I create a page called "ABC" and it gets published and found by Google lets say on the 13th of April.

on the 15th (or 14th) i decide to update the URL, page Title, and content. (Redirect old URL to new URL as well)

Will Google still show this page as being published on the 13th? or would it update the publish date according to the new URL?

Greg

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[AndreVanKets]

Thanks Matt,

That's cleared it up.

I was always under the assumption that the publish date displayed in the serps was the date it was found and indexed.

Thanks again,

Greg

[MattAntonino]

Actually, articles can have the wrong publication date:  http://support.google.com/news/publisher/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=70871

Google News follows this <publication_date>so if that's wrong, chances are you could write an article now and "have it published" 2 days earlier, no sweat. </publication_date>

The source code for the page you linked clearly had two:

class_="publish">Published Monday, April 15, 2013_

class_="publish">_Published Saturday, April 13, 2013

Somehow Google picked up on the earlier date, probably an error, figured the second date was an "article edited" date and kept the first publish date since they aren't using the Google News format.

[AndreVanKets]

Thanks Mat,

I'm still not 100% clear on this.

Were it says "published 3 days ago" in the search results. Is this the date that google first found the page? Or does google get this from the published date set in the article?

Example: If i publish an article today, and say it was published in 2010 will Google display "Published 3 years ago" ? Or would it show the date Google first found the page?

Greg

[MattAntonino]

It's been changed on the page.

Look carefully at the "cached" page - it says Monday the 15th pretty clearly and there's some code on the page.  When the story was updated, it has been put onto the wrong date.

But the original shows up on the cache still -verify for yourself while it's still this way.

date.jpg