Changing only the published date on 50 pages: does "fake freshness" work?

Changing only the published date on 50 pages: does "fake freshness" work?

Question: a recurring gray-hat claim is that simply updating the visible date lifts rankings. Tested honestly on a holdout design.

What was done: 50 stale-but-stable articles had only their displayed date and timestamp markup updated — zero content change. A matched 50-page control kept old dates. Eight-week observation.

Outcome: the date-only group moved an average of 0.4 positions; the control moved 0.3. Within noise — no meaningful effect. A third group (not in the original design but added later) that received genuine content updates plus new dates moved 3.2 positions.

Caveat: 50 pages is modest, and "freshness" may matter far more in fast-moving query types (news, prices) that this evergreen sample under-represents. The clean takeaway: date cosmetics alone did nothing here.

Method note: matched treatment/control cohorts on one site, 8 weeks, Search Console positions; third group added post-hoc (weaker design).

Confidence: medium — a real control, but narrow query type and modest n.