Lose Jetpack Stats When Post Date Changes

Hi, usually changing the post date will change the URL. Can you tell us a bit more about your setup? Or, are you changing the publish date for a page?

Hi,

I have the site setup/indexed with ‘Post name’ URLs which stay the same when updating the publish date.

Trying to work out if this is just my site or does Jetpack universally remove stats on posts which are updated?

If so, can we get Jetpack to start using ‘Post Name’ URLs for tracking pages. Seems sensible since Google recommends keeping content continually updated. Or am I missing something obvious ??

Example
site.com/article-1/
Published
2019/02/18

Updated Publish Date
site.com/article-1/
2020/02/18

All Jetpack stats before ‘new publish date’ are no longer accessible and have vanished from the Jetpack Sitestats. WP URL Format remains unchanged.

Setup
Jetpack 8.5
WP Version 5.4.1

All Jetpack stats before ‘new publish date’ are no longer accessible

This is expected, yes, as a post cannot have views from before it “existed” – putting that in quotes, because technically the post did exist previously, but in a strict sense that post only exists from the moment set as the publication date in the post meta. Any data about the post that predates that moment, “can’t exist” if you approach it purely logically (which is how computers think), so Jetpack ignores it.

Google recommends keeping content continually updated

That does not refer just to your publication date, and simply updating a publication date without actually modifying any content won’t make Google think the post has been updated – it actually compares the current version of your post to the last version it crawled, to see if it has changed.

I found an article explaining this at https://www.lockedownseo.com/change-article-publish-date-seo/

So if you make an actual update to the post, it’s better to add a note with a new timestamp to the post, which search engines will see the next time they crawl your site.

It looks like you’re using the Yoast SEO plugin, so they should also be able to tell you what you need to do to ensure the dateModified schema shows up in the structured data for your site.

Thanks for taking the time to reply : )

“This is expected, yes, as a post cannot have views from before it “existed” – putting that in quotes, because technically the post did exist previously, but in a strict sense that post only exists from the moment set as the publication date in the post meta. Any data about the post that predates that moment, “can’t exist” if you approach it purely logically (which is how computers think), so Jetpack ignores it.”

“which is how computers think” ?? LOL

?? Logically the developers could just add a URL match that combines stats. They’re all still stored in the database.

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“That does not refer just to your publication date, and simply updating a publication date without actually modifying any content won’t make Google think the post has been updated – it actually compares the current version of your post to the last version it crawled, to see if it has changed.”

Not sure what you’re referring to here? I didn’t mention not updating a post fully? and just changing the dates…

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“So if you make an actual update to the post, it’s better to add a note with a new timestamp to the post,”

Sure, in some situations.

But in others,(*I think) it’s better to actually change the publication date. A best of 2020 article, labelled with a publish date of 2017, updated in 2020… why? when all the content is new?

Creating a new URL each year, would mean that you’d lose the benefit of the page rank built over many years.

And the CTR benefit of a new publish date on regularly updated content is huge.

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So, we’ve established this is default jetpack Stats behavior : )

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I think it would be useful for people to have the option of updating the publication date without losing all Jetpack Stats Access prior to that date. Maybe a request for the devs?

Guess, I’m gonna have to stick with GA for now. ??

Thanks; you’re welcome to file an enhancement request here if you’d like, to allow stats to go back before the post was published. It’s not a common usage, so I don’t know how much traction it will get, but that’s the best place to note the request.
https://github.com/Automattic/jetpack/issues