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For a blog entry, I have this meta tags:

<meta property="article:published_time" content="2015-09-07T21:54:43+00:00" />
<meta property="article:modified_time" content="2015-11-13T13:28:21+00:00" />
<meta property="og:updated_time" content="2015-11-13T13:28:21+00:00" />

However, Google only shows the published time on the search results (2015-09-07). I want it to show the last modified time (2015-11-13). What do I need to add in order to achieve this?

I compare my site with others like WPBeginner in which Google shows the updated time. The only difference in the HTML code is this meta tag:

<meta name="revised" content="Tuesday, October 20, 2015, 10:05 am" />

Nevertheless, I added this last meta tag to my site too but nothing happened.

Also, my XML sitemap includes <lastmod> information.

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  • 1
    How long ago did you add the tag? Search results can take a while to update.
    – Steve
    Nov 21, 2015 at 21:31
  • 1
    Can take months to update meta markup.
    – Simon Hayter
    Nov 21, 2015 at 21:38
  • The first 3 meta tags are automatically added since September, and I made several changes in between but the date was never updated by Google. I added the last one ("revised") on 13 November, but I don't think Google sees that meta tag.
    – IvanRF
    Nov 21, 2015 at 21:43
  • Well your first mistake is comparing your site to another with Google updates. Google has limited resources and favours popular sites, for instant it's estimated that WPBeginner has over 6M visitors each month, unless your site has this many visitors, or the links they have then its extremely unlikely your get updates quickly. Depending on your volume of pages will also have an impact, so if Google considers you not so important, and you have thousands of pages then your going to have to wait a awful a lot of time for page updates, such as meta changes, titles and so forth.
    – Simon Hayter
    Nov 21, 2015 at 22:17
  • Google does however learn, so the more you update those pages the more regularly it'll check back, but to assume its not updating comparing to another site, is just bad practice. You should verify your code, and if its fine... then Google will update it, just need to wait and work on your domain authorithy.
    – Simon Hayter
    Nov 21, 2015 at 22:20

1 Answer 1

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2

The solution is to only have one date visible. Thus, the published date should not be visible and the modified date should be the one in the article.

Here there is a good research, and mentions:

It is known that Google looks specifically for a date just under the first H1 tag. This is because blogs often put dates in this location.

After I made this change, Google showed the last modified time (in less than 12 hours).

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