How does Marfeel detect the publication and last update date of an article?

Marfeel classifies articles into new, recent, or evergreen content based on their publication date. Pages that don’t specify a publication date, like home or section pages, are classified as not editorial content.

Publish Date Integrity: Once the publish date of an editorial is established, it should not be changed. This ensures historical consistency and maintains editorial credibility.

The Marfeel editorial crawler utilizes an article’s last update date to decide if a page should be recrawled and its metadata updated.

Marfeel extracts both the publication and last update dates sequentially trying these strategies until one works:

1. JSON+LD (For more details visit https://schema.org/datePublished and https://schema.org/dateModified)

   <script type="application/ld+json">
   {
     "@context": "https://schema.org",
     "@type": "NewsArticle",
     "datePublished": "2021-08-01T04:30:00Z",
     "dateModified": "2021-08-01T05:30:00Z"
   }
   </script>

2. Meta item property type

   <meta itemprop="datePublished" content="2021-08-01T04:30:00Z" id="date">
   <meta itemprop="dateModified" content="2021-08-01T05:30:00Z" id="date">

3. Time item property type as datetime

   <time itemprop="datePublished" datetime="2021-08-01T09:00Z">
   <time itemprop="dateModified" datetime="2021-08-01T05:30:00Z">

4. Time item property type as content

   <time itemprop="datePublished" content="2021-08-01T09:00Z">
   <time itemprop="dateModified" content="2021-08-01T05:30:00Z">

5. Time item property type as node value

   <time itemprop="datePublished">2021-08-01T09:00Z</time>
   <time itemprop="dateModified">2021-08-01T09:00Z</time>

6. Meta article type article:published_time and article:modified_time (supports both property and name attributes)

   <meta property="article:published_time" content="2021-08-01T17:41:45+00:00" />
   <meta property="article:modified_time" content="2021-08-01T17:41:45+00:00" />

More info: Not updating the last update date can impact positioning on Google News and the News Carousel, among other placements. Marfeel tries to create a visual representation on how most likely GoogleBot sees your site and thus doesn't update the title.

Content type

Marfeel automatically computes the Content Type attribute of a url based on the detected publication date according to the above chain.

1. Evergreen: If an article is older than 7 days it’s tagged as evergreen
2. New: If it’s been published within the last 48 hours
3. Recent: If its publication date is between the last 2 and last 7 days
4. Not Editorial: Any article that doesn’t specify a publication date

Based on the rules above any home or sections page with a publication date will incorrectly be considered editorial instead of not editorial content.

What detection strategies does Marfeel use to extract publication and update dates?

Marfeel tries six strategies sequentially: JSON-LD structured data (datePublished/dateModified), meta itemprop tags, time element with datetime attribute, time element with content attribute, time element with node value, and meta article:published_time / article:modified_time properties. The crawler stops at the first strategy that returns a valid date.

How does Marfeel classify content type based on publication date?

Marfeel classifies articles as New (published within the last 48 hours), Recent (between 2 and 7 days old), Evergreen (older than 7 days), or Not Editorial (no publication date specified). This classification drives how the editorial crawler processes and reports on your content.

Why should I not change an article's publish date after it is established?

Changing the publish date after it is established breaks historical consistency and undermines editorial credibility. The publish date should remain fixed once set.