7 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}
7 {{ upvoteCount | shortNum }}

Can Refreshing Your "Post Date" Get You Penalized by Google?!

by Cool Hand Luke
5 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I have a site which was #5 on page 1 of Google for a competitive term. The site is highly SEO-optimized, and full of ONLY original content.

On this site I had a post dated in March, and just to make it look "newer" and attract more viewers, I changed the "date posted" to June. A day later, my site got knocked down to pages 5-7 for ALL of my keywords. It's obviously an issue which got the entire site penalized.

So my question is this: Even with original content, if you update your "post date" in a wordpress post, will Google penalize your site for it?

EDIT: Nevermind, it was just a weird "Google Dance" apparently. All of my keywords are either around where they were previously or ranked HIGHER now.
#google #penalized #post date #refreshing
  • Profile picture of the author BarryWheeler
    Originally Posted by Cool Hand Luke View Post

    I have a site which was #5 on page 1 of Google for a competitive term. The site is highly SEO-optimized, and full of ONLY original content.

    On this site I had a post dated in March, and just to make it look "newer" and attract more viewers, I changed the "date posted" to June. A day later, my site got knocked down to pages 5-7 for ALL of my keywords. It's obviously an issue which got the entire site penalized.

    So my question is this: Even with original content, if you update your "post date" in a wordpress post, will Google penalize your site for it?

    Any ideas?
    I think there's other things at play here.

    Just changing the "Post Date" should not have affected this, unless you've changed the URL.

    What else did you do? Ping the site?
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4297379].message }}
    • Profile picture of the author Mike Anthony
      I'm with barry I really don't think that could be it
      Signature

      {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4297438].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author Valera
    I agree also, changing the post date should not make any difference, neither should the pinging of the post because the whole site was affected. If only that particular post was affected then I would be more likely to think that it was the cause.

    Is it a static blog post on your front page of your root domain?

    If so, and you have moved it back up to the top of your blog, that could have changed some on page SEO factors, which caused reindexing and possible rank slippage after re caching by google, but that is not likely in your case is it?

    It has something to do with maybe some backlinks you have built at some stage, or, it could be adverse effects of Panda, but I am not so sure...

    Maybe it could even be some of your "stronger" backlinks pointing to your root domain have being dropped or went off front page of blogs, there are so many reasons this happens, I cannot put them all down in one post.

    I hope this helps you somehow, but I really dont believe that the changing of post date has caused your site a penalty, don't panic so much about that as a cause
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4297764].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    I quite often update the dates on my posts when I have added new information to them. That certainly hasn't affected rankings for me.

    Changing a post date without changing the content shouldn't negatively affect you, but who knows what Google does.

    I'd wait a week or so to see if it goes back to its original ranking.
    Signature
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4297783].message }}
  • Profile picture of the author retsek
    By changing the post date, you also changed your internal linking -- since a post may appear on page 3 of the archive pages (date, categories, tags), or page 1 depending on the date of the post.

    Just give it time, you should return to your spot.

    Next time, use a seo plugin that will update the last modification time in your sitemap. So you just go to the post and hit update ..rather than changing the date.
    {{ DiscussionBoard.errors[4298123].message }}

Trending Topics