Wrong dates in search results

Hi @ausbel I cannot reproduce this issue but it does look like something is going wrong with times on your site server… Looking at the latest post for example, just published “Arsenal Reveals Danny Welbeck’s Record” it sais there under the title “Published on 9:08 AM September 27, 2018” but I’m pretty sure it’s about 7:30 right now in Islington…

Still, in the Google News sitemap, the same post is date stamped “2018-09-27 06:08:13” which matches the time stamp in both the XML posts sitemap and the RSS feed. These are in GMT — your local time minus one — so that should be more accurate than what it says on the post page itself.

Strange…

Can you tell how I can find a Google search result example where this 4 day difference is showing?

• This reply was modified 6 years, 5 months ago by Rolf Allard van Hagen.

I notice that you have WP_DEBUG switched ON. Is that for debugging this issue? If not, better switch if OFF.

It does, however, reveal that something is eating a large amount of memory and making a lot of extra DB queries. Debug info at the end of the GN sitemap shows:

<!– Queries executed: 97 | Peak memory usage: 65.47 –>

This seems huge to me. It should normally not take more than 40 queries and between 10 and 15 MB to fetch the last 15 posts.

Hello thanks for replying. I have switched off WP debug and I think it’s something wrong with my sever as you said.

I tried searching for “Arsenal Reveals Danny Welbeck’s Record” in Google and it shows me your site post from this morning, with “7 hours ago” underneath it in the search results. Seems about correct ??

Searching for “Carabao Cup: Arsenal 3-1 Brentford Match Report” the top result has “4 days ago” underneath it, contrary to what it sais on the post page itself… Was that post maybe created 4 days ago but then scheduled to be published last night?

Hey,

The article was not scheduled and I don’t know what’s happening but it’s happened again.

I published an article a few minutes ago and here’s the link
https://arsenaltruefans.com/2018/09/revealed-when-arsenal-will-know-will-their-next-carabao-cup-opponent

I tried searching by typing in the name of the article and it shows something surprising on Time of publication ( In 1 day) I don’t know what this means.

See for yourself below in following screenshot.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PIjjC9SWn5Wz9pge6ys_kCDCpeyNd_1p/view?usp=drivesdk

And now I tried by searching by putting the link in search and I saw my article in google top stories with correct time, but good thing is that it this time has identified my amp version and it still shows the ( in one day) check screenshot below.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1whA2Opn8qd7M3nGFdVImpb39Ir8frwse/view?usp=drivesdk

I know this might not be caused by your plugin but I would be happy with your feedback on my problem.

N.B: We are featured in Google News

‘In 1 day’? That means in the future! This is very weird. I checked the same and get indeed a date in the future: the 29th, that is the day after tomorrow!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nA4Z7beXy25KAdq9gNJU5N7o9OdpZnSe/view?usp=sharing

Now I know Google is fast (it already indexed this thread with your two posts from 5 minutes before) but seeing into the future, that’s just ridiculous.

Are the publication dates in Google News correct?

Hey,

The dates in Google News are correct but I have an idea what could have caused this but not sure.

My article talks about an event which will begin on 29th, so I think it’s Algorithm scanned my article content, and decided to show when that even will be beginning ??

What are your thoughts

It’s a theory, yes… A very interesting case, in any case !

Are other posts that show the wrong date also about events on that (wrong) date too?

If so, then that must be indeed the explanation. Although Google does not talk about such an algorithm being in place (not that I heard of anyway) it could certainly exist.

I know they’re heavily investing in AI and applying it to just about anything but their bathroom walls so, yeah, I would not be surprised.

Their logic here would be: hey, if an article is clearly about an event on a certain date, let’s show that event date on our search results instead of the article’s publication date. And I can follow that logic. Think it’s kind of brilliant even… as long as it’s correct about the event date, of course ??

Can you confirm this for other posts on your site?

I had this problem before and solved it taking down “popular widgets” on the sidebar.

So what happens is, when Google scroll the page it assumed the date of one of the popular posts to the post that it was on it.

This means Google news saying article made in 3 days ago even if it was 2 hours before… I hope that helped

Hi,

Thanks for telling me, that’s true.i have also now confirmed this.

This is so stupid of Google.

Hi @mouhalves thanks for sharing your experience. Is that widget from another plugin or the theme? I’d like to test it and try to find out more…

@ausbel you confirm you were using the same widget?

Hey there @ravanh.

Used the normal widget from the theme “Newspaper” by TagDiv
Also, sorry to spam it in here, but can you please have a look on the new topic that I just made?

Best,

mine was caused by inbuilt theme related articles section but I have today observed that google is not making those errors on my site today.

Don’t know if it was a bug or something.

I wonder what is causing Google to confuse post dates in these widgets… Any chance I could see one live?