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Content Dates

Testing & Quality
content-dates

Content Dates is an Agent Skill for testing & quality published in the thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist repository on GitHub: a SKILL.md instruction file an AI agent can load to do this task.

Use when auditing article or blog pages for date markup, generating Article JSON-LD with datePublished/dateModified, or checking whether a CMS template surfaces dates correctly.

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How to use this skill

Bring this guide into your coding agent with a prompt tailored to the tool you use.

  1. Open your project in Codex.
  2. Copy and paste the prompt below.
  3. Review files and risks before approving any action.
Prompt to paste
Inspect the Agent Skill at https://github.com/thedaviddias/Front-End-Checklist/blob/HEAD/skills/content-dates/SKILL.md and all supporting files. Report provenance, permissions, scripts, dependencies, and security risks. Propose an exact installation into .agents/skills/content-dates, but wait for my approval before writing files or running scripts.

Copying this prompt does not install or run the skill. Review third-party files before use.

Show published and updated dates

Google uses publication and modification dates to assess content freshness, which influences rankings for time-sensitive queries. Visible dates also build user trust by signalling that content is current and maintained.

Quick Reference

  • Include a visible published date and a dateModified in JSON-LD for every article or blog post
  • Use ISO 8601 format (2024-03-15T10:00:00Z) in structured data; human-readable in the visible UI
  • Update dateModified only when content meaningfully changes — not on trivial edits

Check

On each article or blog page, check: (1) Is there a visible published date in the page body or byline? (2) Does the JSON-LD Article or BlogPosting block include datePublished and dateModified properties in ISO 8601 format? (3) Does the <head> include <meta property="article:published_time"> and <meta property="article:modified_time"> Open Graph tags?

Fix

  1. Add a visible publication date in the page byline: <time datetime="2024-03-15">March 15, 2024</time>.
  2. Add datePublished and dateModified to the Article JSON-LD block: 
    {
  "@type": "Article",
  "datePublished": "2024-03-15T10:00:00Z",
  "dateModified": "2024-11-20T14:30:00Z"
}
  3. Add Open Graph article time tags to <head>: 
    <meta property="article:published_time" content="2024-03-15T10:00:00Z">
<meta property="article:modified_time" content="2024-11-20T14:30:00Z">
  4. Ensure your CMS or build system updates dateModified automatically on content saves.

Explain

Google's freshness algorithm rewards recently published or updated content for time-sensitive queries. Structured date markup lets Google confidently surface the correct date in search snippets; without it, Google must guess from page text or HTTP headers, often producing wrong or missing dates.

Code Review

Verify that Article or BlogPosting JSON-LD includes both datePublished and dateModified in ISO 8601 format. Check that <time datetime='...'> elements in the body use machine-readable dates. Confirm dateModified updates when content changes, not just on every deploy.

For full implementation details, code examples, and framework-specific guidance, see references/rule.md.

Rule page: https://frontendchecklist.io/en/rules/seo/content-dates