{"id":26113,"date":"2024-06-11T17:27:08","date_gmt":"2024-06-11T17:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/?p=26113"},"modified":"2024-06-11T17:27:12","modified_gmt":"2024-06-11T17:27:12","slug":"googles-gary-illyes-the-lastmod-signal-is-binary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/?p=26113","title":{"rendered":"Google’s Gary Illyes: The Lastmod signal is binary"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

In a recent LinkedIn discussion, Google analyst Gary Illyes revealed that the search engine takes a binary approach when evaluating a website’s lastmod signal from sitemaps.<\/p>\n

The revelation came as Illyes encouraged website owners to upgrade to WordPress 6.5, which now natively supports the lastmod element in sitemaps.<\/p>\n

When Mark Williams-Cook asked whether Google has a “reputation system” to gauge how much to trust a site’s reported last modified dates, Illyes he stated<\/a>“It’s binary: we either trust or we don’t<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are no shades of gray for Lastmod<\/h2>\n

The lastmod tag indicates the date of the most recent significant update to a web page, helping search engines prioritize crawling and indexing.<\/p>\n

Illyes’ answer suggests that Google doesn’t take into account a website’s history or gradually builds trust in the values \u200b\u200bof the last modification that is reported.<\/p>\n

Google either accepts the last modified dates provided in a site’s sitemap as accurate or ignores them.<\/p>\n

This binary approach reinforces the need to properly implement the lastmod tag and only specify dates when significant changes are made.<\/p>\n

Illyes praises the WordPress developer community for their work in version 6.5, which automatically populates the lastmod field without additional configuration.<\/p>\n

Lastmod accurate essential for tracking prioritization<\/h2>\n

While convenient for WordPress users, native lastmod support is only beneficial if Google trusts you to use it correctly.<\/p>\n

Inaccurate lastmod tags could cause Google to ignore the signal when scheduling crawls.<\/p>\n

With Illyes confirming Google’s position, it shows that there is no room for error when using this label.<\/p>\n

Why SEJ cares<\/h2>\n

Understanding how Google works with lastmod can help ensure that Google shows new publication dates in search results when you update your content.<\/p>\n

It’s an all-or-nothing situation: if the dates are deemed unreliable, the signal could be ignored across the board.<\/p>\n

With the information revealed by Illyes, you can ensure that your implementation follows best practices to the letter.<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Danishch\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

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In a recent LinkedIn discussion, Google analyst Gary Illyes revealed that the search engine takes a binary approach when evaluating a website’s lastmod signal from sitemaps. The revelation came as Illyes encouraged website owners to upgrade to WordPress 6.5, which now natively supports the lastmod element in sitemaps. When Mark Williams-Cook asked whether Google has a “reputation system” to gauge how much to trust a site’s reported last modified dates, Illyes he stated“It’s binary: we… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-seo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26115,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26113\/revisions\/26115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afreeurl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}