Make the Date People See Match the Date Machines Read

by | Sep 10, 2026

Q: My page says "Last updated March 2024," but Google shows a different date. Which one is wrong?

⚠️Before you start: back up your site first. Do not "fix" this by setting every date to today. That is the one thing that makes it worse.

What this fixes:

A page shows one date to readers and a different one to search engines and AI tools. The visible text says one thing; the dateModified in the page's schema, the article:modified_time tag, or the sitemap says another. On a legal page, this reads as carelessness. On an article, it makes the engine distrust both dates. Fix 008 covers an old year in the footer. This fix covers two dates on the same page that disagree.

Steps:

  1. Find the visible date. Open the live page and note any "Last updated," "Effective date," or"Published" text.
  2. Find the machine date. Right-click the page, choose View Page Source, and search (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) for dateModified and modified_time. Note the values. Paste the page address into Google's Rich Results Test and read the dates there, too.
  3. Decide which date is true. The true date is the last time the content actually changed. If you don't know, the WordPress "Last modified" date on the page's edit screen is the most accurate answer.
  4. Fix the typed date. If the visible date is wrong, edit the page and change the text. For legal pages, prefer wording that pulls from WordPress automatically (e.g., "Last updated" shortcodes available in most builders and in Rank Math/Yoast) so the two can't drift again.
  5. Fix the machine date. In Rank Math or Yoast, dateModified follows the post's modified date. If a plugin or theme setting is forcing a different date (some "freshness" plugins do), turn it off. If the SEO Doctor's schema block contains the date, tell us the correct value, and we'll update it.
  6. Check the sitemap. Open yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml (Rank Math/Yoast) and confirm the page's lastmod matches.
  7. Save, clear your cache, and repeat step 2. All three dates (visible, schema, sitemap) should now agree.
  8. Do the same for every legal page and every article in the last two years. Legal pages first.

How to check it worked:

The visible date, the dateModified in the schema, and the sitemap lastmod all show the same day for each page checked, and the Rich Results Test reports no date errors.

Tools you may need (free):

  • View Page Source — built into every browser.
  • Google Rich Results Test (https://search.google.com/test/rich-results) — shows the dates Google reads.
  • Rank Math or Yoast settings — where the schema dates come from on most WordPress sites.

Common mistakes to avoid:

  • Bumping dates to look fresh. Engines compare dates against real content changes and discount pages that fake it.
  • Fixing the article template and forgetting the legal pages, which are usually hand-typed.
  • Using two schema plugins at once, each writing its own dateModified (see fix 001'sduplicate_entity_id).
  • Updating the visible date, then forgetting to clear the cache and concluding the fix didn't work.

When to call SEO Doctor:

  • You can't find where the wrong machine date is coming from.
  • Your schema is hand-coded, and you want it corrected and re-validated.
  • You have many articles and want this done in one pass.
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