When Should My JSON Markup Dates be Visible On-page?

• In December's MasterMind Meetup, you mentioned showing the original publication date and the last updated date. We're currently doing that in JSON-LD but wondering, did you also mean to show those dates on the actual page for the users' benefit too?

  Also wondering, should the date be actually visible on the page or is it fine just to have it in our JSON-LD coding?

Answer:

Most of the time the last updated date is sufficient. However, we can see how in some situations, like technical documents, manuals, etc., there may be some user benefit in displaying both dates.

So, yes, we advise that you to visually display the last published date on the page if you're also marking it up in JSON. Google wants to see all the same data on the page visible to users that you include in your markup. That includes dates, images, etc.

You can read more details and tips on Article markup and all types of Structured Data in our guide, 2019 Pro’s Guide to Understanding & Using Structured Data for Rich Search Results.

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