Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Should the date be included in news URLs
-
My website is not a news or magazine site, but we do have a news section updated 2-3 times a week with industry related news.
We are working on a new structure for the URLs.
Should the date be included in the URL?From this article from Google I understand that as long as we submit a news sitemap it doesnt matter whether or not numbers are included in the URL, correct?
https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/68323?topic=11665
-
Not having the numbers would probably be less confusing than having numbers that might later duplicate. If you can produce the news sitemaps (and keep them accurate & up to date) the unique numbers are not technically required for Google news listings. So if they are hard to add and you are confident in your sitemaps it shouldn't be an issue.
If you are less confident in them and being listed on google news is a big deal for you then try to get them added.
-
we may have more than one news item per day but the title would be different....
would you recommend adding these numbers, or no need and might as well leave them off?
-
that number would work fine... as long as you only ever had 1 news item per day.
-
We dont have wordpress so I can't work on the plugins.
Would it make sense to have a 6 digit number with the date, ie for today 072913, or would google not know to interpret that as a date?
-
Yes you should use numbers if you can implement a news site map correctly you will easily be found if you use these numbers. The only way you're going to do this is by using a correct news site map if you're using WordPress and I don't know if you are not I can recommend going to Yoast.com and finding an excellent news site-map
here's what Google has to say about it
Keep in mind that if the only number in the article consists of an isolated four-digit number that starts with 199 or 200, we won't be able to crawl it. Please note that this rule is waived with News sitemaps.
I would strongly suggest using a sitemap_index.xml file
https://support.google.com/news/publisher/answer/74288
I hope I have been of help,
Thomas
-
That is correct. We tend to still use a unique number though - partly as a "belt and braces" approach. The other advantage is that headlines can be updated, keep a headline relevant URL and easily redirect to the correct version.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical
Hi all, A number of our pages have dropped out of search rankings. It seems they are being marked as "Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical" However, the page Google is choosing as the canonical is totally different - different headings, titles, metadata, content on the page. We are completely mystified as to why this is happening. If anyone can shed any light, it would be hugely appreciated! Example URL is this one:
Technical SEO | | Eric_S
https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/IFA-financial-advisor-mortgage/london Which Google seems to think is a duplicate of this: https://www.vouchedfor.co.uk/solicitor/london0 -
Same URL for languages sub-directories
Hi All, I have a main domain and 9 different subdirectories for languages, example: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page-uk.html www.example.com/es/page-es.html we are implementing hreflang tags for the languages, but we are thinking to get rid of the dashes on the languages URL: -uk or -es, so it will be: www.example.com/page.html www.example.com/uk/page.html www.example.com/es/page.hrml would this be a problem? to have same page names even if they are in different subdirectories? would we need to add canonical tags, at lease for the main domain URLs? www.kornferry.com/page.html Thank you, Rachel
Technical SEO | | RaquelSaiz0 -
Date in permalinks. Bad?
Hello! I have a recipe website with over 1000 posts. Currently I have the month and year in the permalink that everyone is hinting off to me is bad. On the same front people tell me if I change the permalinks to just the post name it's going to significantly slow down my site. I'm torn on this one about changing. From Google's standpoint is it better to change to the post name and if so should I be fearing I'm going to run into trouble with the change? Any suggestions you have would be appreciated. Thanks!!!
Technical SEO | | Rich-DC1 -
Robots.txt Syntax for Dynamic URLs
I want to Disallow certain dynamic pages in robots.txt and am unsure of the proper syntax. The pages I want to disallow all include the string ?Page= Which is the proper syntax?
Technical SEO | | btreloar
Disallow: ?Page=
Disallow: ?Page=*
Disallow: ?Page=
Or something else?0 -
Some Old date showing in SERP
I see some old date Jan 21 2013 showing up for some categories in Google search results. These are category pages and I do not see the date in view source. This is not a wordpress site or a blog page. We keep changing this page by removing/adding items so it is not outdated.
Technical SEO | | rbai0 -
Removing URL Parentheses in HTACCESS
Im reworking a website for a client, and their current URLs have parentheses. I'd like to get rid of these, but individual 301 redirects in htaccess is not practical, since the parentheses are located in many URLs. Does anyone know an HTACCESS rule that will simply remove URL parantheses as a 301 redirect?
Technical SEO | | JaredMumford0 -
Odd backlinks from yahoo news
Can anyone explain what this backlink does? The original content was syndicated on Yahoo News from Mashable. At first glance it appears to be a straight up follow link from Yahoo to Mashable, but upon closer inspection I saw this in the code. went public just three months ago Here's the article on yahoo news: http://news.yahoo.com/facebook-zynga-generates-12-revenue-them-175509319.html I've rarely seen backlinks from yahoo for any content partner let alone follow links. The us.lrd.yahoo.com in the hyperlink makes me highly suspicious.
Technical SEO | | inc.com0
