Untemplater said:

Interesting to know about the meta data and G picking up the republished date.

 

For those of you who take an old post and republish with a new date - do you lose all of your social media likes and such?

You lose the SM stuff only if the URL is different. So those without dates in their URLs, then no. Hence, one "benefit" of a simpler URL structure. 

aaaah, I see I see. Thanks

I switched to no-date URLs a couple of years back with Dean's Permalink Migration plugin. Worked great and now if I update and republish, the URL is the same.

The only bad thing I've noticed is you lose all your social media counts. 

Interesting to know about the meta data and G picking up the republished date.

 

For those of you who take an old post and republish with a new date - do you lose all of your social media likes and such?

You lose the SM stuff only if the URL is different. So those without dates in their URLs, then no. Hence, one "benefit" of a simpler URL structure. 

For those of you who take an old post and republish with a new date - do you lose all of your social media likes and such?

I've seen traffic boosts, and ProBlogger.net has recommended it. He does suggest improving and modifying the article significantly before republishing. 

Hope this helps!

You can see the published date and modified date in the meta data. 

<meta property="article:published_time" content="2014-01-22" />

<meta property="article:modified_time" content="2014-01-21" />

 

It seems Google takes the published time into account. Not sure about the modified time. 

Ah hah! Now that is very interesting and what I'm looking for.

Instead of changing the date of the post and risking something, I was thinking it would be wise and better to just update an old post with new figures  and stuff. Hopefully Google can see we are actively updating our content instead of just rehashing our content and rewarding our efforts accordingly.

<meta property="article:published_time" content="2014-01-22" />

<meta property="article:modified_time" content="2014-01-21" />

It seems Google takes the published time into account. Not sure about the modified time. 

Yes, as a general rule they can tell what the date is on a post. That is why it is often a good idea to keep dates in your theme.

Not the date, but when I click the UPDATE button and keep the date the same. thx

I would say a bumped article (meaning new date) will see a 50% increase in search traffic that steadily declines over the first 7 days.  After about 2 weeks, no noticeable difference.

The exception I've seen is when you bump it, it picks up traction and social media shares, then it will get much more residual traffic.  I think it has to do with social and with more links being created to the article.