Updating published date of pages

If you update a page - for example when an operator changes their welcome offer - is it a good idea to update the published date? Have heard pros and cons but wondered what people on here thought.

Cheers,
Bob

Regardless of the published date Google will know the page was updated and will consider it fresh(er) content.

Visitors prefer fresh content. If I read about that welcome offer on your site and see it's from 2011 (if the original article was from that year) then I won't believe you that the offer still stands.

So - update the published date. Do it for the visitor, not for Google.

Like Dan says, can be good for the user (but google already knows). So if you're going to update pages regularly go ahead and include the date, but on the other hand if you have pages that sit for months without being changed I wouldn't include the date at all.

Sorry, should have made things clearer. This is on a Word press plugin, Yoast I think, so not sure what impact that has for either user or Google.

You mean the updated date goes into an XML Sitemap?

The technical side isn't really my thing but apparently The XML sitemaps update automatically when a page is modified. We don't publish the page published date so don't think it matters for the end user so probably no biggie either way I think?

Well it definitely doesn't hurt to update the published date. I guess the con arguments would be that the page loses its rank because it's considered new by Google. But that would be wrong. A page doesn't lose rank because of the date, and Google loves fresh content. So in any case, if updating the published date accounts for any change whatsoever, it would be a positive one.

I actually wanted to ask pretty much the same question, surprised to find the topic already open. For my website I need to update the date of the posts almost daily (for example, I publish content on 28 and have to update it to 29 the next day).

I`m not sure if it`s ok, but personally I did this a lot of times and Google wasn`t angry at all (so far). I don`t think it`s wrong.

However, I`m talking about "today-oriented" content like tips. I would try not to change the date for old, static pages - as I said I don`t think it is wrong, but the risk would be too high if there`s even 0,1% chance for something to go wrong. It`s one thing to lose rank for a tip or article, it`s another thing to lose rank for a bookie review that took work and years/months to rank well.

I don`t think I helped you at all, but here`s my opinion - unless you hear a clear cut answer from 1-2 experts, maybe try NOT to change dates.

hm good question I have two options in my CMS. I can update the published date and I can update an internal publish date to bring an articel to the homepage again. When I update an article or want to have this one at the homepage again then I only change the internal date but I have also tried to change the publish date itself and could not see any changes. I don´t think that this will change rankings.

great topic, and well discussed. I think if the page is getting a change of content or basically an update (whether is % of bonus, or even a seasonal offer, etc) then the page should be updated to the date of change. If you change the date of the page and nothing was updated on the page, then that would not look good for the SE and visitors.