Using Dates For Featured Web Content
December 02, 2003 | 
10 Comments
There is quite a bit of content out there on the Web and things change on a daily basis. Because of that, and other reasons, it’s important to attach dates to featured, news or frequently updated Web content.
This should be done both on the page you link to the content from and the content itself. Preferably up near the beginning of the article or after the title or headline.
Seems like a no-brainer to me, however it’s often either overlooked or simply not done. Homepages are the usual culprits. Apple is a good (bad?) example as there are no dates attached to their top stories on the home page.
However, there are also many examples of featured articles with no dates attached to the articles themselves. To me this is the worse situation. Anyone coming in via a search or link from another site is clueless as to how recent this information is.
A case in point — in the last couple of days I’ve seen links on various sites to Testing the Three-Click Rule by Josh Porter. It’s a good article and you should read it, however, when I was reading it I had the distinct idea that I might have read it sometime before. I’m pretty sure I have.
The thing is I can’t tell when Josh’s article was written as there is no date attached. Is this information he presents new? If it’s not, how old is it? It’s it an updated version of previously published information? I’d hate to be wasting my time reading something I’ve already read if it’s not changed.
The simple solution is to add a date. If this is an update to another article add a “published on” and an “updated on” date. This is a must in my mind for lots Web content. At the very least any news or featured content. There is just too much out there as it is and it’s hard enough to sort through without having to guess as to when something was published.
Filed under: IA and Usability
Comments
1. patrick h. lauke said:
you’re right…it seems like a no-brainer, but i come across non-dated content like the article you mention all too often.
what really makes me think is how ephemeral web content really is. at least with paper publications you’d get somebody holding on to a copy…but with this global interweb thingy, there’s no need to save/copy/archive stuff…as it’s all there, online…until it’s gone ;)
Posted on December 2, 2003 03:52 PM | #
2. Egor Kloos said:
This is high on my list of things that bug me about content on the Internet. I once thought I’d found something interesting and told everybody who would listen, only to find out that it was writen in 1998 and was no longer relevant. Also searching for information that a Google search says should be there but isn’t is pretty high on my list. Why have a page indexed if the content will soon be removed from that page. It’s the simple things that makes the Internet a pain in the butt sometimes.
Posted on December 2, 2003 05:48 PM | #
3. Dave Meehan said:
I agree with your points about dates, timeliness of information can be as important as the information itself. What bugs me is the assumptions made in that three clicks article. What tasks were the people set? If it was to find a specific peice of information in a single site, the chances are people will keep going, because they will naturally not wish to fail the test. If it was to find a supplier for some service or product the results would be totally different. I only have to look at my own browsing behaviour to know that. i.e. search for a product on google. Is the product mentioned in Googles abstract, and in a useful context? Follow the link - is there information on the page? Is it mentioned in the navigations for the site? Is there a site search? Yes, maybe follow one link deep and see if it looks promising. If not, hit the back button, and check the next google result. Move on. If you set a time limit on the test (ie. find the product in the next 5 or 15 minutes) then the click depth will probably decrease on all except the most clearly structured sites. I don’t mind drilling deeper as long as it looks like I’m going to find something. The apparent proximity needs to improve, as conveyed by the site.
Some sites have so much content you couldn’t do it in 3 clicks. Take Microsofts MSDN. That often takes 5-6 clicks to drill through the content heirarchy if you are looking for a specific function. You could search, but I find you get a mismash of results, they probably need to improve the search relevance (i.e. try typing a known function name). But I’m content with drilling 5-6 clicks in that case, because I can see that the context is improving with each click, and that I’ll find what I want.
Posted on December 3, 2003 01:32 AM | #
4. MIke said:
Right now, the only part of our site using dates, is our Press Release page. The content on the front page, is mainly articles and our “big” press release, nothing too date oriented.
Posted on December 3, 2003 08:36 AM | #
5. Greg said:
I thought at one time that there was a function or feature in some development environment that allowed a developer to simply add a function that would read the modified date of a file, and would automatically read that information without having to do it manually.
If something like that doesn’t exist, how hard would it be to incorporate that functionality?
Posted on December 3, 2003 11:27 AM | #
6. The Scholar said:
A major problem is that sites done a couple of years ago or recently will not even bother to update their pages. However, when entries like this are posted it helps build awareness and hopefully designers will understand the importance of placing dates on time sensitive information and even information that is not time-sensitive.
I remember back in the day when having a “Page Last Updated” text was very important to have. Dont’ see those hanging around anymore…
Posted on December 3, 2003 06:42 PM | #
7. Mark said:
I’ve always encouraged client to date their material. A lot of the choose not to or have me pull dates once posted because it makes it very apparent that they haven’t added any new content.
Posted on December 5, 2003 01:18 PM | #
8. Elaine said:
Greg, in PHP, you can do this:
I use it all the time.
Posted on December 11, 2003 01:55 PM | #
9. Elaine said:
um, that would be…
[?php
$dateUpdated = date (“F d, Y”, getlastmod());
print(“This page last updated $dateUpdated.”);
?]
Posted on December 11, 2003 03:23 PM | #
10. Esther Bailey said:
I enjoyed your article. Very interesting reading. However, I think that adding the name of the author as well as a date of creation is also important. I say this because although you have kindly dated your article at the top of the page, I don’t know who you are until I scroll right down to the very end of the page. Then I could have easily missed it, because its so small! Or am I being too fussy?!
Posted on April 27, 2004 05:12 AM | #
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