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Is there a way to tell Google not to show the date in search results?
For example, here is the result in Google for one of my images:
“May 1, 2013 – Crab sits on a branch in the mangrove swamp”The date is not relevant at all to the image. And on other images (the ones I have started SEO’ing), the date just takes up valuable room for keywords.
Just wondering is there a way in YOAST or anything else to say to google “please don’t show the date, just the meta description”?
And would this be a good move do you think?
View my portfolio at THPStock Direct via Microstock Man. I also do Web Design & Graphic Design.
Just bumping this up, as I think this could be quite crucial to our success.
If you look at Shutterstocks search results in Google for instance, no dates are given for an image listed. This is because the images are “evergreen” – in other words, they don’t go out of date just because they were published last week.
But at the moment our sites are telling Google the date published which Google is running with and displaying, which (*I Think*) is having a negative impact on search results. (more so Web Search rather than Image Search)
AJT or Cascoly (in Leo’s absence) – is there any chance you could find the code for me to remove (or preferably comment out) the date from each image post so that there is no date info on the page whatsoever (either in the header, the dublin core or the actual page content), and I will happily trial this in Google and report back with my results?
Edit: I should add, there are a couple of plugins to do this, but they are 2 years out of date, and I also took a look at the code in some pages and it seems Leo has coded in his own calls to get the date/time of an image rather than the standard ones. Thus my need for help to try this experiment!
View my portfolio at THPStock Direct via Microstock Man. I also do Web Design & Graphic Design.
Interesting experiment:
I find the image date at only one spot on the image page. The code where this comes from is located in content-image.php. It should be easy and without any unwanted side-effect to comment it out:
...
$symbiostock_post_meta = 'ss_after_img_page_author_box';
do_action( 'ss_after_img_page_author_box', $symbiostock_post_meta );
?>
—
<?php
$symbiostock_post_meta = 'ss_bottom_img_page_preview_well';
...
The line “…” is the one you want to comment out. You can even store a changed copy of the file in your (dragonfly) child theme. That will protect your change from being deleted with the next theme upgrade.
I am curious what you’ll find.
Hey thanks Imago, I appreciate that.
It seems the date is elsewhere too though, such as in the header:
From what I have read Google will grab the date from the line it finds first – in this case, this Dublin Core item in the header.
Any ideas how to remove the Dublin Core section?
View my portfolio at THPStock Direct via Microstock Man. I also do Web Design & Graphic Design.
Found it:
<meta name="dc.title" content="" />
<meta name="dc.identifier" content="" />
<meta name="dc.description"
content="" />
<meta name="dc.subject" content="" />
<meta name="dc.creator" content="" />
<meta name="dc.contributor" content="" />
<meta name="dc.publisher" content="" />
<meta name="dc.license"
content="" />
<meta name="dc.type" scheme="dcMITYPE"
content="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/Image" />
<meta name="dc.type" scheme="dcMITYPE"
content="http://purl.org/dc/dcmitype/StillImage" />
<?php if ( $related_images )
{
foreach ( $related_images as $related_image )
{
?>
<meta name="dc.relation"
content="ID ); ?>" />
<?php
}
}
?>
<meta name="dcterms.created" scheme="ISO8601"
content="" />
<?php
} else
{
?>
- Title:
- Url:
<a href="" class="identifier">
- Description:
- Subjects:
- Author:
<a href="" class="creator">
- License:
<a href=""
class="license"><?php echo symbiostock_eula(
'' , true ); ?>
- Created:
- Related:
<a href="ID ); ?>"
class="relation"><?php echo $related_image
->post_title; ?>
<?php if ( $related_images )
{
foreach ( $related_images as $related_image )
{
?>
in functions.php
There seems to be 3 times that the dc.created line is used. Which bits should I comment out? And if I comment it out here but another page is trying to call it will that cause problems?
View my portfolio at THPStock Direct via Microstock Man. I also do Web Design & Graphic Design.
Yes, you’re right. I already had second thoughts about what I posted and looked again:
There’s two more spots. The first, the one you mention, is easy to fix. The code is in function.php:
...
<meta name="dcterms.created" scheme="ISO8601" content="" />
...
The line “<meta name="dcterms.created" scheme="ISO8601" content="” />” can be commented out.
However, if you’re using the YOAST SEO plugin you’ll find
with different dates/times of course on your image page. I don’t see any option to switch that off.
It comes from /frontend/class-opengraph.php in the Yoast SEO plugin folder:
...
public function publish_date() {
if ( ! is_singular() )
return;
$pub = get_the_date( 'c' );
$this->og_tag( 'article:published_time', $pub );
$mod = get_the_modified_date( 'c' );
if ( $mod != $pub ) {
$this->og_tag( 'article:modified_time', $mod );
}
}
...
If you want to mess with the plugin code change it to:
...
public function publish_date() {
//if ( ! is_singular() )
return;
//$pub = get_the_date( 'c' );
//$this->og_tag( 'article:published_time', $pub );
//$mod = get_the_modified_date( 'c' );
//if ( $mod != $pub ) {
//$this->og_tag( 'article:modified_time', $mod );
//}
}
...
or
....
public function publish_date() {
return;
}
....
An update of your SEO plugin will wipe that out of course.
A word of caution: I just hope that’ll work. I haven’t tested it.
OK. haven’t seen your latest post. I don’t see commenting out this line causing any trouble at all. It just disappears from the html the bowser (and google) sees. And that’s what you want, isn’t it?
Ok well I commented it out, and then DELETED it from the functions.php file but it STILL SHOWS UP in the header!!
Cleared browser cache and site cache, nothing.
I’m obviously missing something…
Also, thanks for the Yoast tip but I don’t see that in my header – I don’t have open graph turned on so perhaps thats why.
View my portfolio at THPStock Direct via Microstock Man. I also do Web Design & Graphic Design.
You’re definitely missing something. Maybe a copy of funtion.php in your child theme? Maybe still some caching that gets in you way? Hard to guess… – Anyway, I just had a quick check on my site and the dublin core date entry is gone with that line deleted as expected.
GOT IT. Sorry, seems there was a problem with my editor not uploading the file propery.
Ok, got rid of the “Image Updated on…” text in the author box and the Dublin Core date from the header.
Can you check one of my image pages and see if you can spot anything I’ve missed?
http://thpstockphotos.com/image/himalaya-mountains-9/
Cheers! 🙂
View my portfolio at THPStock Direct via Microstock Man. I also do Web Design & Graphic Design.
According to this:
I have no date reference on my page anymore.
Let the experiment begin!
It will probably take a few weeks for all the pages to be crawled and the date removed. Will report back when I have some data to share.
Thanks Imago!
View my portfolio at THPStock Direct via Microstock Man. I also do Web Design & Graphic Design.
Would one of you please be kind enough to create a single post with all the steps in for others who would like to do this?
http://kerioakimaging.com - trying to reopen
http://nail-art-at.kerioak.com - Art and Nail ArtI checked one of your image pages. All dates are gone, i.e. commented out. However, I wonder if it is by accident or if you have reason also to comment out the “” reference before the actual date meta tag.
@christine: Maybe we should wait for some results of this experiment…
@Imago Borealis wrote:
I checked one of your image pages. All dates are gone, i.e. commented out. However, I wonder if it is by accident or if you have reason also to comment out the “” reference before the actual date meta tag.
@christine: Maybe we should wait for some results of this experiment…
Thanks for picking that up, just fixed it.
Yeah Christine, personally I would wait if I were you! This could be a huge waste of time…or it could be awesome. But all the necessary steps are in this thread if you are determined to try it too.
Either way I’ll let you know in about 3-4 weeks 🙂
View my portfolio at THPStock Direct via Microstock Man. I also do Web Design & Graphic Design.
Hi folks, I’m sorry if it seems a silly doubt, but what is the problem of the date showing in the Google search results? Why to remove such info? What will it improve?
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