This thread is for the general discussion of the Article Pros and Cons of Hiding Dates on Your Forum or Blog. Please add to the discussion here.
Thanks danthex, I'm glad you enjoyed it 🙂
I wanted to talk about it because I myself have considered hiding dates, but have not in the past because I didn't consider the content to be "time irrelevant". I think if I had a website with content that didn't rely on anything related to time, I would definitely hide the publishing date. It kind of works out though... TImeless content can bring a lot of content even if the publish date is old & visible to the visitors.... I do wonder if some people disregard the content because it's old, even if it's still relevant... but then I look at Reddit, YouTube, and other websites and see old content being shared all the time, so it gives me some hope that "timeless content" can pretty much hold its own even if the old publish date is shown. I think that's the huge benefit of that type of content.... whether you hide it or not, it's relevant, so users will be pleased to have spent time looking at / reading / watching the content. If the date is hidden, they may think it's more recent and that's obviously a plus, but perhaps an older publish date is actually a visible testament to content quality... I mean, if people are discussing something from 2008 in 2019, it's probably a LOT more relevant than a topic from 2019 that nobody is discussing in 2019... so I think it's definitely contingent on the type of content, website topic, the targeted audience / community members, and the webmaster's preferences.
Before I finish reading this article:
There is nothing more than annoying than using a site which hides dates, and this even includes my own sites before I get around to implementing a feature to show dates on them.
And I have considered hiding them simply to simplify the UI a bit, just so that I don't have as much superfluous junk no cares about.
If it's a blog, then I generally won't look down on it because it's blog posts were a long time ago, in truth, a lot of important posts on blogs worth reading were probably written about a decade ago, so this is nothing unusual to me.
I probably wouldn't bother subscribing to it, if I don't think it's worth the time to do so, I hate subscriptions with a passion. But, that wouldn't stop me going through it to see what they have after landing on something interesting. Content is king.
Also, don't worry about a blog being dead for weeks or months. This is actually fairly normal for a blog.
After reading it:
An interesting perspective, but I think you're slightly missing the point here. Hiding dates is more annoying than anything else. It reeks of either a smart ass who is too smart to put in basic information for me to look at or an idiot.
I wouldn't even remotely consider that someone is doing it for SEO, but that they're being extremely, extremely lazy and cutting corners.
Also, I deliberately filter dates in search results, that is a thing on Google. Otherwise, you end up in a situation where you get a lot of obsolete articles from a decade ago teaching me the wrong thing.
A "genius" who is actually inside the right time window but thinks a year old article is "too old" would end up getting excluded from my query, simply for doing that.
All in all, trying to screw with things like this is more likely to backfire badly on you than to have any real tangible benefit. Not to smack you down here, but that would basically be my immediate gut reaction to a site trying to pull this.
As always, the way is to just pump out more quality content, market your site, etc.
What search engines and anyone really cares about is more content more than anything.
Activity might matter, if you run a forum, but people are going to be driven up the wall before long without dates on posts.
There is nothing more than annoying than using a site which hides dates, and this even includes my own sites before I get around to implementing a feature to show dates on them.
And I have considered hiding them simply to simplify the UI a bit, just so that I don't have as much superfluous junk no cares about.
If it's a blog, then I generally won't look down on it because it's blog posts were a long time ago, in truth, a lot of important posts on blogs worth reading were probably written about a decade ago, so this is nothing unusual to me.
I probably wouldn't bother subscribing to it, if I don't think it's worth the time to do so, I hate subscriptions with a passion. But, that wouldn't stop me going through it to see what they have after landing on something interesting. Content is king.
Also, don't worry about a blog being dead for weeks or months. This is actually fairly normal for a blog.
After reading it:
An interesting perspective, but I think you're slightly missing the point here. Hiding dates is more annoying than anything else. It reeks of either a smart ass who is too smart to put in basic information for me to look at or an idiot.
I wouldn't even remotely consider that someone is doing it for SEO, but that they're being extremely, extremely lazy and cutting corners.
Also, I deliberately filter dates in search results, that is a thing on Google. Otherwise, you end up in a situation where you get a lot of obsolete articles from a decade ago teaching me the wrong thing.
A "genius" who is actually inside the right time window but thinks a year old article is "too old" would end up getting excluded from my query, simply for doing that.
All in all, trying to screw with things like this is more likely to backfire badly on you than to have any real tangible benefit. Not to smack you down here, but that would basically be my immediate gut reaction to a site trying to pull this.
As always, the way is to just pump out more quality content, market your site, etc.
What search engines and anyone really cares about is more content more than anything.
Activity might matter, if you run a forum, but people are going to be driven up the wall before long without dates on posts.
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I don't believe in fake dates (no I don't mean real dating lol) or fake stats. But I do know there are programs to make it seem like people are visiting your site. Also, you can buy traffic that is practically bots - or well, useless anyways.
maxxthompson
New Arrival
Thanks for a detailed explanation, this was incredibly helpful!
Now, as a blog owner myself, I understand why hide publication dates, but as a blog reader of other, third-party blogs, I find it rather annoying that the dates are hidden. But still, if I really need to check when the post was made, I can always View page source and find the publication date in the source code 😎.
Now, as a blog owner myself, I understand why hide publication dates, but as a blog reader of other, third-party blogs, I find it rather annoying that the dates are hidden. But still, if I really need to check when the post was made, I can always View page source and find the publication date in the source code 😎.
lucycarter
Reputable
You have nicely explained pros and cons of hiding dates on blog/forum. You have touched upon every possible topic. It was really helpful for me.
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