Using Date published + Date updated can wreck your organic CTR – Search Engine Land
Adding both “Date published” and “Date updated” to articles can confuse Google, causing it to display outdated dates in search results.
The impact? A 22% drop in CTR for one site, according to an SEO case study shared by SEO professional Abby Gleason on LinkedIn today.
Why we care. Your position in the search results only matters if people click. Searchers may be less likely to click on your fresh content if Google displays an older publication date.
What happened. Gleason shared this screenshot of an unspecified website and explained what happened:
- Despite content updates in 2024 and 2025, Google displayed publish dates as old as 2021 in search results.
The fix. If you have both, remove one date that appears on the page. Use whichever date best represents its freshness – either the date the content was published or updated, not both.
The datePublished and dateModified Schema doesn’t seem to matter as much as the on-page date, Gleason further explained in a follow-up comment:
- “……
The post Using Date published + Date updated can wreck your organic CTR – Search Engine Land first appeared on One SEO Company News.
source: https://news.oneseocompany.com/2025/03/12/using-date-published-date-updated-can-wreck-your-organic-ctr-search-engine-land_2025031260409.html
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