Credibility · 22 points
Published or updated date
One check, stated three ways: what we measure, what would make it wrong, and how to confirm it yourself.
What this measures
The newest machine-readable date on the page: article:modified_time or article:published_time, a <time datetime> element, or a dateModified/datePublished value in JSON-LD. A date in visible prose only is not counted.
Where this check can be wrong
A page that genuinely never changes has nothing to update, and the check still awards partial credit for the absence. A future date is treated as a clock or year error rather than as freshness.
Verify it without taking our word for it
View source and search for datetime= or dateModified; if the only date on the page is the words “updated recently”, a crawler cannot read it either.