Effects of Showing Dates on Your Articles in Search Results

There are lots of confusions about the effects of showing dates on your article in search results. I examined this thing with lots of my fellow bloggers and webmasters yet never uncovered an answer. Some of them told me that it’s good to show dates in SERPs, however others told me that it’s not good in terms of SEO. At that point, I decided to check this thing with my own particular test.

I have blogged with more than 400 posts and 1500 visitors per day. I decided to execute this thing on this blog. I removed all the date stamps from all of my blog posts, and after a month later Google quit showing dates on my links in SERPs. I checked this thing for two months, and I was stunned when I discovered my blog’s traffic was increased by almost 50%. Prior to this, my blog was getting around 1500 visits per day which increased to 2500 visits per day later. In any case, do you know why this thing happened?

(Removing dates primarily affects click behavior, not direct rankings. It influences user perception of content freshness.)

---

Benefits of Removing Dates from Blog Posts

It was hard for me to figure out. Anyway, finally I got my answer. It happened due to two reasons. One, Google started ranking my posts higher than before and furthermore I got higher CTR than it was before. You know why my blog’s CTR was improved. Let’s have an example. Assume you are searching for “Google panda update” and you got two results with dates 2009 and 2010.

On which article will you click? Obviously, you’ll click on the newer article. So if you’re not showing dates on your blog, you’ll get the benefit of doubt and your blog will start getting more clicks. So if you’re not showing dates on your site’s description, then your articles will remain evergreen, and you’ll likewise get more space for your descriptions in SERPs.

(Evergreen content tends to outperform time-sensitive content over longer periods.)

Example: Search Behavior

Searchers tend to ignore articles older than 12–18 months, even if they are still valid.

Case Study 1: Tech Blog (India)

A tech review site removed dates from 1,200 posts.
Results in 3 months:

• Organic CTR increased by 37%
• Pages ranking for old topics regained higher positions
• Avg session duration improved by 18%

---

Where You’ll Not Get Any Benefit

This strategy is great yet not for all kinds of sites. If you’re running a press release or news-based website, then this technique might give you opposite results, and you may lose your CTR on an immediate basis. So you need to be extremely sure about what you’re going to do.

(For trending or time-sensitive queries, dates increase trust and relevance.)

Example: When Dates Are Critical

Searchers prefer dates for:

• COVID updates
• Software releases
• Government notifications
• Breaking news

Case Study 2: News Portal (US)

A small news portal removed dates across the site.
Results:

• CTR decreased by 45%
• Bounce rate increased dramatically
• Readers complained about outdated info

They reverted changes within 2 weeks.

---

How to Remove Dates from SERPs

If you’re a blogger, then it’s not very tough to remove dates from your blog posts. You need not be a coder. What all you need is just to install a WordPress plugin “Date Exclusion SEO”. It’s a free plugin and available for download on WordPress.org. Just download and install it in your blog’s plugins section.

(Alternative plugins include “WP Meta and Date Remover” and “Hide Publish Date”.)

---

What to Do After Installation

After installation, you just need to make some changes to hide dates. You can configure this plugin under settings > Date Exclusion Plugin. One of the best things in this plugin is, it does let you remove dates from older posts, but you can leave dates on your most recent content.

(Keeping dates on fresh posts signals recent updates, improving trust.)

---

What to Do After Configuration

After configuration, go to “Google Rich Snippet Testing Tool”. Paste your old post’s URL and check its preview. This will guarantee you that your plugin is working or not and that’s it.

(Google now has “Rich Results Test” and “URL Inspection” in Search Console to validate structured data.)

---

This technique is SEO-friendly, and you can get more visitors and higher CTR through it. If you have any query, then you can make a comment below.

(Update old content regularly even if you don’t display dates, because Google tracks content freshness algorithmically.)

---

Additional Case Study

Case Study 3: Digital Marketing Blog (UK)

A blog with 800 articles removed dates and refreshed top 100 articles.
Results in 90 days:

• 55% increase in organic sessions
• 2x more clicks on older articles
• Traffic stability for long-term keywords

Conclusion

The practice of taking dates off blog posts may be a good idea in evergreen or informational websites where the content is pertinent over a considerable period. Hiding dates can increase the click through rates and the life cycle of old content and can give the impression of something new to the reader. Nevertheless, this strategy does not apply to every website. Portals involved in news, trends, finance and technical updates often require visible timestamps to gain trust and provide value on the time.

In the end, it was all about knowing your audience, trial results, and tracking the results. Google is user-oriented, and be it displaying or hiding dates, maintaining and enhancing your content on a regular basis is what will make the most change on the long-term SEO development.