Just wondering if a page's "last modified" or "date created" stamp makes any difference to search engine results? And if so, is it better for the page to have been untouched for years, or updated daily (even if it just means opening it and resaving it). Any ideas?
First - google will rank older sites/pages higher, and that's based on creation date. BUT, google will also favor pages that are updated frequently (every day). So, the older the site is, and more frequently updated, the better.... I know that was a very simple answer - hope it helps though...
google will use the "last modified" to determine how often the page or site is updated, Google likes sites that are updated on a regular basis
Can anyone else confirm that G actually looks at the "last modified" data? And if this is actually the case, why isn't everyone using PHP to open/save their index page every day - which will give it a nice fresh "last modified" date.
Google remember the date of index rather than when the content is created, Also Google give more importance to the quality of content and I think they've nothing to do with the last modification date.
G may look at the last modified date (I'm not sure about that though) BUT it definitely sees changes in content. Simply saving and uploading an unchanged file won't help, as far as I know.
I'm not asking about content changes, that's a no brainer I specifically want to know if Google places any importance on the time stamp of a file. ****** Can somebody give me a definitive answer?
Updating daily may be a problem it can change the position of your site. Try to modify it once for a month.
Why do you say that??? When has anyone recommended once a month? Of course it can change your position, but if done correctly, it can make your rank better. It also depends what kind of updates you're talking about. If it's a news page, of course content will change. But for static pages, the only reason I'd ever change them is to test how different keywords work in the SERPs (and that would be a monthly change for me, until I'm done testing keywords). From a different forum: "Once the date-modified is reset on Linux servers it stays that way for a certain number of days. When google checks it all it sees is that the file was "recently modified". After the time expires the file is not "recently modified" and google does not consider it "freshly updated." If that helps at all (probably not though).