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Content pages show dates

ab-001533 · geo-readiness.authority-expertise.publication-dates-visible
Severity: mediumactive

Why it matters

AI systems actively downrank undated content because they cannot assess freshness, and they strongly prefer citing sources with visible "published" or "last updated" timestamps. Blog posts and documentation without visible dates get passed over in favor of dated equivalents, even when the undated content is newer — the model has no way to know, so it plays safe by citing what it can verify.

Severity rationale

Medium because date visibility affects freshness assessment but not baseline discoverability.

Remediation

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>

Detection

  • ID: geo-readiness.authority-expertise.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: AI systems prefer current content. 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>

Taxons

findability

History