<b>Inaccurate gets discounted after ~3 false signals</b>
We tracked sitemap accuracy vs. actual content change on 83 sites, then watched recrawl behavior.
— Accurate lastmod sites: recrawl within 2.8 days of a real update ▓▓▓░░░░░░░
— 'Always today' lastmod (CMS bug): recrawl lag 14.0 days ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░░
— Delta: ↑ 5x slower
When says 'updated' but the content is byte-identical, Google notices. After roughly 3 false positives per URL, it stops trusting the field and falls back to its own change-detection — slower for everyone.
The most common bug: CMS stamps lastmod=now on every export regardless of real edits.
So what: a sitemap-wide 'today' timestamp is worse than no timestamp. Accurate is a freshness fast-pass; a lying one burns the trust that makes it work.
Crawl & Render
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<b>Inaccurate gets discounted after ~3 false signals</b>
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