How to hide the date on Google search results?

Hello everyone, 🙂

I am using Newsmag and Yoast SEO since a few month. I just noticed, when doing a research on Google, the results showing the posts for my website are displaying the publication date. This happens, even if I deactivated the date in the Google snippet for my post in the Yoast SEO plugin…

After doing a research, I found this : https://wordpress.org/support/topic/plugin-wordpress-seo-by-yoast-date-removal

The document is 2 years old.

1) Are these instructions still valid?
2) Where to put the piece of code in the theme?
3) Is there any of you who are using another solution (code, plugin…)?

My website address is http://www.regardnomade.com

Thanks.

Vincent

Hi Lucian, the old post is not quite clear on the method, you mention css and I can’t tell if that is an additional fix for something else or for the date etc.

Could you please repost the exact code to remove the date and in what file please.

Also what about this method?

1. Using Code in Functions File

This can be considered as the aggressive version of removing date and time-stamp from your WordPress blog. It is very powerful and removes the function of every php code, that helps to generate date. Date displayed in the comments will also be completely removed.

/** Start of Remove Date TimeStamp from blog posts */
function remove_post_dates() {
add_filter('the_time', '__return_false');
add_filter('get_the_time', '__return_false');
add_filter('the_modified_time', '__return_false');
add_filter('get_the_modified_time', '__return_false');
add_filter('the_date', '__return_false');
add_filter('get_the_date', '__return_false');
add_filter('the_modified_date', '__return_false');
add_filter('get_the_modified_date', '__return_false');
add_filter('get_comment_date', '__return_false');
add_filter('get_comment_time', '__return_false');
}
add_action('loop_start', 'remove_post_dates');
/** End of Remove Date TimeStamp from blog posts */

Add this code to functions.php file in your theme and update it. Wait for Google Search Bots to crawl and index your blog posts. Date will be removed from meta description of search results.

—

I read this article How to Remove Date From Google Search Results

It’s a better idea to remove dates from last year content, and for all latest content (ex: 2013 posts), let the date remain intact.

Note: I don’t recommend hiding date, rather show last updated time.

This is getting confusing…. Many sites say don’t hide it, some say don’t delete it and leave space, google hates space…too confusing….

I guess I’ll leave it in, there’s a reason why it’s coded in, maybe i shouldn’t mess with it and hope google doesn’t punish bloggers for having a date in their snippet.

• This reply was modified 10 years by mboydnv.

Generally Google likes the date if you have an actual “news site” or blog vs advertising or corporate site. Be aware they keep track of the date they first capture the content from your sitemap regardless so you can’t trick them into saying something is 10 years old when it’s 10 days old. Ideally the date is also used to identify ‘updates’ to content to ensure Google fully re-spiders a page for better SEO and relevance.

If you’re not running a news portal or blog, you obviously don’t need the “date” on a page, but posts are usually intended for time-specific content — if you comment on the holidays, it’s useful to know what year the holiday is you’re writing about for context. If commenting in a “post” about your new iPhone, useful to know what year that is, also.

There is no harm in having a date. For example even on “pages” it’s useful to have a copyright date in the META depending on your use case.

Just some thoughts on a pre-Thanksgiving morning here in Calif.

:-0