datePublished vs dateModified: the freshness lever people fake and lose

datePublished vs dateModified: the freshness lever people fake and lose
These two dates are a tactic, not just metadata — and abusing the comparison backfires. datePublished is original publication; dateModified is the last meaningful edit. The temptation: bump dateModified daily to fake freshness.
— Real content update: change dateModified, and actually change the content
— Trivial/no change: leave dateModified alone — Google cross-checks against crawled content diffs
— Original date: never overwrite datePublished to look newer; it breaks the entity's timeline
What it means for you: rolling dateModified forward without substantive edits is a freshness signal Google increasingly discounts when the rendered content didn't change. Worse, AI engines reading both dates spot the mismatch. Update the date when you update the page — the honest pair outperforms the gamed one. Watch this: freshness verification now compares your declared dateModified against actual content fingerprints, so the fake-date tactic is decaying fast.