News sites that get a time stamp in Google - and those that don't 4
Posted on
April 28, 2009 by
Malcolm Coles
Some news sites get a last updated time stamp in Google - and some don't.
The time stamp
It's a bit of information next to the URL that says XX minutes ago.
Not all news sites get it - although I can't see any rhyme or reason.
Sites that do have it
The sites that do have it are: Times, Telegraph, BBC News, Express, ITN, Guardian.
These sites all have a time stamp
The Express could probably live without it, as I recently showed that they don't update their site after 8am on a Sunday.
Sites that don't have it
The sites that don't seem to have it are: FT, Sun, Mirror, Manchester Evening News, Dail Mail, Metro and Independent.
No time stamp
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All news sites should have clear publication and last updated time/date on all content (like the guardian do on their article pages) along with any other relevant meta data, keywords, tags etc.
Common sense archiving strategy and context for search engines and humans alike.
Yes, I agree. But I can't see anything in the source code of the main news pages (as opposed to the articles) to indicate that google is getting this info from meta data, as opposed to working it out itself. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place ...
Hmm Sky don't get a time stamp either, but ZDNet do.
I don't get one for ChronicleLive so although I feel left out, it isn't just me.......
ZDnet's currently says 10 hours ago, so maybe not that great to have it!