A Rennaissance Man

HTML DateTime Stamps

A time clock used by employees to record the date and time they began work.
Every web page should be date and time stamped as a best practice of interest to every person you hope will use your website.

ChatGPT Prompt:

What is the optimal way to markup html with a date and time stamp such that search engines will know when the page was created.

ChatGPT Response:

To markup HTML with a date and time stamp that search engines can understand, you can use the HTML5 time element. The time element allows you to specify a date and time in a standardized format, which can be helpful for search engines to understand the context of your content. Here’s an example of how you can use the time element:
				
					<article>
<h1>Page title</h1>
<p>Page content goes here</p>
<time datetime="2023-02-23T14:30:00+00:00">February 23, 2023</time>
</article>
				
			

In this example, the datetime attribute specifies the date and time when the content was created in ISO 8601 format. The time element also contains the formatted date and time that will be displayed to users.

By using the time element in this way, you are providing structured data to search engines that can help them better understand the content and when it was created.

While search engines like Google and Bing may use the HTML5 time element to understand when a page was created, it is not the only factor that they use to determine the relevance and freshness of a page.

Search engines use a variety of signals to determine the relevance and freshness of a page, including the frequency and recency of updates, the amount of engagement and activity on the page, the authority and credibility of the website and the content, and many other factors.

However, using the time element in your HTML markup can provide a clear and unambiguous signal to search engines about the creation date of your content, which can help them to better understand the context and relevance of your page.

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