How to show a last-updated date on your homepage

Add two things to your homepage: a "Last updated" line that visitors can see, and a dateModified field in the page markup that carries the same date. Change the date only when the content of the page has actually changed.

How do you add a last-updated date to a homepage?

Three steps are enough.

1. Write a visible line. Put it at the top or the bottom of the page, with a label: "Last updated: 20 October 2026". In HTML, wrap the date in a <time> element so machines can read it too:

<footer>Last updated: <time datetime="2026-10-20">20 October 2026</time></footer>

2. Put the same date in the page markup. A homepage is not an article, so you can use the WebPage type. In schema.org, WebPage is a subtype of CreativeWork, and dateModified is a property defined for CreativeWork.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "WebPage",
  "name": "Example Store",
  "dateModified": "2026-10-20"
}
</script>

3. Generate both from one source. If the visible date and the markup date are typed by hand in two places, they will drift apart. Read both from a single variable in your template.

The store above is made up; it only shows the format.

What does Google say about it?

Google's page on byline dates (the publication or update date shown with a result) says:

• Google does not rely on one factor to decide when a page was published or significantly updated. Its systems look at several.
• Add a prominent, user-visible date and label it with text such as "Published" or "Last updated".
• Use structured data, datePublished and/or dateModified. Google describes these fields for subtypes of CreativeWork, for example Article, BlogPosting and VideoObject.
• Keep the visible date and the structured date consistent. Time and time zone are optional; if you give a time zone, give the correct one.
• Do not use a future date, or the date of an event the page describes. The date should be when the page was published or updated.
• If a page carries many other dates, the wrong one may be picked. Consider removing some of them.
• Google does not guarantee that a byline date will be shown in search results.

One caveat: Google's guide uses article-type examples. It does not write a separate rule for homepages. Using WebPage on a homepage is valid in schema.org, but we could not confirm from Google's documentation how it treats the field on homepages.

What counts as an update on a homepage?

Homepages change often: a product is added, an announcement is removed. Google's wording is the date a page was "published or significantly updated". Deciding what is significant is up to you. Our reading, not a Google rule: fixing a typo does not need a new date; changing something the page claims (a price, a scope of service, an address) does.

When should you not change the date?

Google's guidance on helpful content lists, among the questions to ask yourself, whether you are changing the date of pages to make them seem fresh when the content has not substantially changed. So:

• Do not generate the date from the server clock ("today"). A date that changes on every visit says nothing about the content.
• Do not treat the deploy date as the update date. If only a stylesheet changed, the page content did not.
• Do not back-date either. If you do not know the original publication date, giving only a last-updated date is better than inventing a publication date. Google says you can provide a publication date and/or a last-updated date.

Should the date be in the first HTML?

If the date is in the first HTML response, every tool can read it. If it is written later by JavaScript, tools that do not run JavaScript may not see it. Google's own JavaScript guide says not all bots can run JavaScript. To check from a terminal:

curl -s https://example.com/ | grep -o '<time[^>]*>[^<]*</time>'
curl -s https://example.com/ | grep -o '"dateModified"[^,}]*'

If either command prints a line, the date is in the first HTML. If nothing prints, the date is either missing or added later.

What do Turkish homepages look like?

On 19 October 2026 we measured the homepages of 30 large Turkish sites across 8 sectors. On 25 of them the homepage had no update date or one older than 12 months. It was the most common problem we found. Details and limits: Are Turkish websites ready for AI? We measured 30.

Two cautions. The sample is not random; it is a pilot. And "missing" means we did not find it in the first HTML, so a date added later with JavaScript would not show up in this measurement.

Ruescan is Rueseo's site scanner. One of its 275 signals looks at this date and counts a homepage without a recent update date as a "possible issue" (signal glossary, how the score is calculated).

Frequently asked questions