Gary Illyes from Google ranted on Bluesky about of us updating the lastmod date of their sitemap recordsdata when all they’ve modified was the date of their footers copyright line from 2024 to 2025. Gary mentioned, do not do it, it isn’t sufficient of a change to the web page’s content material to warrant a lastmod date replace.
Gary posted on Bluesky in all caps:
O.M.G. PEOPLE! UPDATING THE COPYRIGHT YEAR IN THE BOTTOM OF YOUR PAGES IS NOT A SIGNIFICANT UPDATE, NO NEED TO UPDATE YOUR LASTMOD
Yea, SEOs are inclined to replace the lastmod date too often and possibly a few of that blame as to do with the CMS they’re utilizing however nonetheless.
Simply altering the footer textual content is just not sufficient of a motive to inform Google the web page modified, it’s best to solely replace the lastmod date when the textual content on the web page modified in a bigger approach.
The query is how a lot of a change is sufficient, through which Gary replied to saying:
We purposefully do not outline “important”, or so I feel anyway. In my opinion, altering the precise content material is important, however iirc johnmu would additionally add schema and linking adjustments. Nevertheless I am fairly positive we each agree that altering the copyright date is just not important.
Discussion board dialogue at Bluesky.
