Content pages show dates

Freshness is one of the few citation factors an AI-search vendor names outright. Microsoft's grounding-index guidance puts it sharply — "In search, stale content degrades ranking. In grounding, a stale fact produces a misleading response" — and its AI-citation guidance lists regular updates among the factors that help content get referenced. A visible "published" or "last updated" date is how a page declares its recency to readers and to the systems extracting from it; undated content gives them nothing to assess.

Render a visible publication or last-updated date on every blog post and documentation page. Use a semantic <time> element with a machine-readable dateTime attribute so both human readers and AI crawlers parsing HTML pick it up. Edit your post template in src/app/blog/[slug]/page.tsx or the docs layout.

<time dateTime="2026-04-02">April 2, 2026</time>
<p className="text-sm text-muted-foreground">Last updated: March 15, 2026</p>

• ID: publication-dates-visible

• Severity: medium

• What to look for: Count all blog posts and dateable content pages. For each, check whether a visible date indicator is present in the rendered output: publication dates, "last updated" timestamps, "published on" or "updated on" text near content. Dates must be visible in the rendered output — dates only in schema markup or HTML metadata don't count for this check (they're covered separately in AI-Readable Structure). Report: "X of Y dateable pages show visible dates."

• Pass criteria: Count all dateable content pages (blog posts, documentation, guides). At least 80% of dateable pages must show visible publication or "last updated" dates that users (and AI crawlers reading HTML) can see. If there is only 1 dateable page, it must show a date.

• Fail criteria: Fewer than 80% of dateable content pages show visible dates. No visible date signals on any content pages means 0% — a clear fail. Report: "X of Y dateable pages show visible dates — Z% (threshold: 80%)".

• Skip (N/A) when: No blog or dateable content exists (pure SaaS with only app pages and no blog or docs).

• Detail on fail: "0 of 4 blog posts show visible publication dates — 0% (threshold: 80%). AI systems use dates to assess content freshness." or "Documentation has no 'last updated' indicators — 0 of 3 docs pages show dates"

• Remediation: Freshness matters more in AI answers than in classic ranking (Microsoft: "a stale fact produces a misleading response"). Show when content was published or updated:

  // Blog post
  <time dateTime="2026-04-02">April 2, 2026</time>
  
  // Documentation
  <p className="text-sm text-muted-foreground">Last updated: March 15, 2026</p>