Show published and updated dates
SkillDev toolsLets your agent check web pages for correct article date markup and generate Article JSON-LD with publish dates.
Available today. Use it from your connected AI after setup.
No other account needed.
Connect ahel once, and every AI you use reads what you have installed.
Then ask your AI: use the Show published and updated dates skill
About this capability
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.
What this skill tells your AI
The instructions your AI receives, as published by thedaviddias/front-end-checklist in skills/content-dates/SKILL.md and read by ahel’s review.
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
dateModifiedin 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
dateModifiedonly 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
- Add a visible publication date in the page byline:
<time datetime="2024-03-15">March 15, 2024</time>. - Add
datePublishedanddateModifiedto the Article JSON-LD block:{ "@type": "Article", "datePublished": "2024-03-15T10:00:00Z", "dateModified": "2024-11-20T14:30:00Z" } - 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"> - Ensure your CMS or build system updates
dateModifiedautomatically 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
Signals
- GitHub stars
- 74k
- Forks
- 7k
- Last commit
- Aug 2026
Advanced
- Catalog kind
- skill
- Gateway key
content-dates- Source
- github.com/thedaviddias/front-end-checklist