Gary Illyes of Google criticized SEOs on Bluesky for unnecessarily updating the lastmod date in their sitemap files due to minimal changes, such as updating the copyright year. He argues that such minor changes do not constitute a significant update to the webpage content. Illyes emphasizes that the lastmod date should only be updated when there are substantial content changes, highlighting ongoing confusion within the community regarding what qualifies as a 'significant' change. Gary acknowledges differing opinions on what changes merit a lastmod update and points out the role of CMS in these practices.
O.M.G. PEOPLE! UPDATING THE COPYRIGHT YEAR IN THE BOTTOM OF YOUR PAGES IS NOT A SIGNIFICANT UPDATE, NO NEED TO UPDATE YOUR LASTMOD.
Just changing the footer text is not enough of a reason to tell Google the page changed.
In my view, changing the actual content is significant, but iirc johnmu would also add schema and linking changes.
We purposefully don't define 'significant', or so I think anyway.
Collection
[
|
...
]