Getting rid of "last post" dates in SERPs?

I have a forum that is primarily being used as platform to write product reviews (this was started two years ago, before vB 4.0 that is made to handle articles like that).

So my reviews are basically a detailed article that are posted as a closed thread. The problem is that many of them show dates from 2008, when in reality I've updated each review many times since then (some have even been 100% completely re-written to stay up to date). Despite this, the problem is that in the SERPs many of these threads show dates like 2008.

I went ahead and deleted the dates from the posts earlier this year but Google still shows the dates for most threads. For the posts it's showing the date, it's pulling it from the "last post" date shown in each forum category (threads in forum). But on some posts it's pulling a date from I have no idea where, because it's not the original post date nor is it the last post date.

Now I'm so frustrated and this is costing me a lot of $$$ (in lost SERP clicks) that I'm thinking about deleting the date column shown in each forum category. Will this solve my problem? And secondly, will it have an repercussions? For example, now in Google it shows "similar threads" under a result that includes a date... will it now not show the similar threads because there's no date present?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Why not update the dateline field in the database to now() for those selected thread/postIDs?

Hi Brian, I love how I'm spending all this time conjuring up complicated solutions, when in 30 seconds you come up with something easier and better

One question though... I'm not the most experienced with databases. I assume I would just open the DB in phpmyadmin and search for a unique phrase/sentence from the post to find it, and then edit the date? What would be the best way, because again, I'll probably overcomplicate the process

The dates are stored in unix time stamp integers for dates, so you need to do something like

Code:

update post
set dateline =  UNIX_TIMESTAMP(now())
where postid in (1,2,3)

where 1,2,3 are your post id's in question. You can do something similar for thread table as well.

of course, make a db backup and even test on a db copy before doing any of this stuff

Originally Posted by Brian Cummiskey

The dates are stored in unix time stamp integers for dates, so you need to do something like

Code:

update post
set dateline =  UNIX_TIMESTAMP(now())
where postid in (1,2,3)

where 1,2,3 are your post id's in question. You can do something similar for thread table as well.

of course, make a db backup and even test on a db copy before doing any of this stuff

Do I run that is a query? (sorry but I'm not super familiar with the DBs)

I did open up an example post though in the DB and see what you mean about the unix time. i.e. it says 1239509773 for the "dateline".

I found this site that converts UNIX time stamps back and forth: http://www.onlineconversion.com/unix_time.htm

Would it be possible for me to just use this to come up with the new unix number and then plug that into the dateline field for that post? For example, if I wanted the postdate to be May 15, 2010 8 am it generates 1273910400... can I just use that number to replace the other number?

BTW Thanks so much for your help!

Hey,

You can just run the database call directly in say phpmyadmin

so you would run

update post
set dateline = UNIX_TIMESTAMP(now())
where postid in (1273910400)

to do just the one post or you could run,

update post
set dateline = UNIX_TIMESTAMP(now())
where postid in (1273910400,3838383,2828281,1111122)

Including each record/post you want to update, this would update the time stamp to the exact second that run the code...

As Brian said though make sure that you backup your database first and if you can run this on a copy DB before your live site.

Thanks Ceri, but I'm not sure I want the time stamp to be now for every post. Will my method of changing the unix number directly (so I can use the exact date I want) work also? If so, how many tables are there that contain the date stamp for a given post/thread?

Thanks and that's a cute baby in your avatar!

Hi,

Yes you could do them one by one using a custom timestamp if you wish that will work fine... There is one post's table and one thread table. You don't need to change both just updating the post record should work but you could update both if you wish.

Regarding my avatar, thank you she isn't much of a baby any more however.

Ceri

Thanks Ceri, I'll give this a try tomorrow and report back if there are any problems. There's only a few threads I'm concerned with and I'll just be updating them to around the date they were last re-written/modified.

By the way I have two accounts on here (one for each forum) and that's why I accidentally made my last post under my other username.

Thanks again.

Ceri's instructions are incorrect. DO NOT follow them.

Namely, the WHERE clause needs to be your postID's, not your timestamp.


If you want to do it manually via phpmyadmin, you can using your generated string tool.
Both the thread table (displays dates on forum home) and the post table (displays in postbit) will need to be updated.

Hey guys now I'm a bit confused

Brian, when you say I can use my "generated string tool" if I do it manually, is that in reference to the UNIX time converter tool I posted?

Thanks

Yes, exactly.

find your post to edit
load it up in myadmin
pick a date
run it through the time convertor tool
paste that timestamp into the myadminfield and save.

just remember to also update the thread time to match to the first post time.