Google’s John Mueller defined that altering the dates in your XML Sitemaps lastmod date to all present immediately, the newest day, will not favor your rankings or website positioning. He stated on Reddit, “setting immediately’s date in a sitemap file is not going to be one thing that works in favor of anybody, it is simply lazy.”
This can be a tremendous outdated matter, one thing we mentioned right here numerous occasions, so what’s yet one more story on it.
John’s full response was that these kind of website positioning hacks, or no matter you need to name it, could have labored for a short time, however they don’t have long run advantages. And with the lastmod date, that would not work.
He wrote:
I do not know your state of affairs, so it is unimaginable to say. There are actually some sneaky issues that “work” for some time (often it is only a whereas), and it is irritating to be in a state of affairs with a competitor like that. Nonetheless, setting immediately’s date in a sitemap file is not going to be one thing that works in favor of anybody, it is simply lazy. Within the early days, it was typically an indication that the sitemap generator was confused or damaged (if a web page is dynamically generated, theoretically it is “all the time up to date”). It is trivial for serps to acknowledge, and solely makes it more durable for them to acknowledge up to date pages. This undoubtedly is not working of their favor.
Google has been warning that you need to solely change the lastmod date for vital content material adjustments. Not for issues like altering your copyright date within the footer or different much less vital adjustments. However SEOs or possibly their CMS platforms are simply too set off pleased with lastmod dates. In reality, Google could find yourself not trusting it.
So do not attempt to idiot Google together with your lastmod date, it mustn’t work.
Discussion board dialogue at Reddit.
Replace: John needed to be clear:
I’m wondering if this comes throughout as being “altering the date is ineffective” — which it usually is not. This was extra concerning the state of affairs the place a sitemap file all the time has the present date for all URLs (which truly is ineffective). However no less than individuals are pondering of sitemaps, so there’s that 🙂
— John Mueller (@johnmu.com) April 29, 2025 at 9:02 AM
