Wordpress-seo: [Enhancement] Provide a setting to remove the datepublished date published schema

[Pcosta88]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Google only shows published dates in its search result pages and does not show updated dates. This can lower the CTR and lead to reduced traffic.

Users can create a filter to remove this using this guide here https://developer.yoast.com/schema-documentation/api/ but not all users are technically skilled to do so.

Describe the solution you'd like

Provide a setting to remove the datepublished date published schema

why you think the feature request is something we should consider for the Yoast SEO plugins?

Improve Technical SEO and UX

NOTES

Google uses the datepublished schema Yoast outputs as one signal to determine if it should show the date. This guide explains more: https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2019/03/help-google-search-know-best-date-for.html.

[Pcosta88]

Please inform the customer of conversation # 495523 when this conversation has been closed.

[mayada-ibrahim]

From user: Schema.press and other schema plugins are providing this feature

[jdevalk]

@mayada-ibrahim can you tell me why you're not just updating the publish date in your WP site? Doing this would mean the date gets shown differently in many spots...

[slipperx]

@jdevalk I am surprised you do not seem to grasp the point or maybe I missed something. If you publish a post say January 2017 which you update every 6 months with the latest information. Even if your schema is set up to reference the modified date Yoast SEO stubbornly shows the original publish date. Changing that is not straightforward or clear. The published date your plugin shows to the public in the SERPS is misleading and very detrimental from a CTR viewpoint. Who wants to click on an article 2 years old when you can see much newer ones in the SERPS.

So your article which is possibly the latest and the best never gets clicked on.

You can turn the date off in Yoast but that is only half an answer. For a paid plugin this is a glaring and obvious faux pas.

[jdevalk]

@slipperx help me out here, since WordPress shows that date in multiple places, why not just change the _actual_ publish date in WordPress itself? Trying to understand this reasoning.

[slipperx]

@jdevalk Indeed you can change the publish date of updated content but then you are effectively saying that piece of content was created on the date it was modified rather than the date it was actually published in its first form. I am not sure Google would be very happy at that slightly misleading info but I do not know for sure. The better solution seems to me to just publish the modified date and leave the published date unstated for the purpose of honesty.

[MarkPraschan]

I created the following snippet to remove the datePublished and dateModified from Yoast's 'article' and 'webpage' Schema markup:

add_filter( 'wpseo_schema_article', 'yoast_modify_schema_graph_pieces' );
add_filter( 'wpseo_schema_webpage', 'yoast_modify_schema_graph_pieces' );
function yoast_modify_schema_graph_pieces( $data ) { 

    unset($data['datePublished']);
    unset($data['dateModified']);

    return $data;
}

[MediaMaquina]

This new way of placing all in a JSON without any control is bad.
I only use the breadcrumbs but it adds a bunch of other schema i don't want.
I can either disable the feature which kills breadcrumbs or enable it and get all the unwanted items.
Why can't we have settings?

EDIT: Forced to go back to pre-version 11.-
When the plugin controls the site and not the admin is never a good sign.

[Djennez]

Hi @Salamander3, you can use the information on our knowledgebase to create, or have someone create, some code to alter the schema pieces to your liking. This thread remains open as a feature request for a visual interface to these settings.

[MediaMaquina]

Thanks for feature request.