How to remove your WordPress post date stamp from Google SERPS

Just about every WordPress blog theme displays the date a post was published which can be useful to your readers, if the date isn’t relevant to your posts however it can be disruptive to the appearance of your content is Google’s SERPS.

By using javascript instead of php code ( as is standard in WordPress themes ), the date/time will be shown in the exact same fashion as your current theme, but Google will ignore that piece of information and not show the date stamp before your meta description in the SERPS. Here’s how you make the change.

On most WordPress themes the 3 files you will need to update is your index.php to update your homepage, single.php to update your individual posts and archive.php to update your archives if you index them. More files may need updating depending on your theme. As always if your not 100% sure what you’re doing back-up your theme before making any changes.

Head into the appropriate file and find the php code which inserts the date with each post, it will look something like this:

<?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?>

Replace the code with the following:

<script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">document.write("<?php the_time('F jS, Y') ?>");</script>

The change will turn this:

Into this:

Much better!

Now you should be free to make the most of the limited and valuable space available for your pages meta descriptions, without the date stamp getting in the way.

The change won’t be instant of course, but your root level page should update quickly while your remaining posts will update over the next few days/weeks depending on how often Google crawls your page.