Why I discourage embedding date in URL’s (including WordPress Permalinks and also other CMS)

By Angsuman Chakraborty, Gaea News Network
Monday, December 19, 2005

Update: Google engineer, Matt Cutts agrees with me in recommending not including date information in the url. In his guidance for SEO optimization for blogs he notes:

I wouldn’t bother with year/month/day in blog urls; I’d just use the first few words from the title of the post in the url.

Link

The reasons I discourage date’s in a permalink are:

  1. It is redundant information as date is already part of the post information and need not be additionally within the url.
  2. Search engines like google, which gives importance to words in URL’s will be poisoned by url’s with date embedded.
  3. Most browsers display a limited amount of url string. The url’s show first when a page is downloading. Having a meaningful url gives them upfront knowledge about its relevance. Date is often not useful unless we are searching solely for news.
  4. Several content in a blog may not be time sensitive like useful tips, code examples etc. Embedding the date in url is meaningless there.
  5. There is value in keeping url as short as possible. In the rare case when someone will be forced to type your big wordpress url, he will curse you less if you do not have date and year embedded

 Any questions?

Update: For a different view point, illustrating the benefits of having dates in permalinks,  please refer to the excellent comments from Squeg. Read both and make your own decision.

Discussion
November 9, 2010: 4:16 am

I like my website url to be all words and short.

October 7, 2010: 9:13 pm

Thanks for the informative posts. I really appreciated it.

October 5, 2010: 6:28 am

Very informative post. Thanks for sharing this!

October 5, 2010: 2:38 am

Good and informative post,it helped me as well as my friends, I really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing.
Data in URL should not be significant.

September 28, 2010: 12:32 am

Assuredly yours is the bestest site I have read…

July 22, 2010: 1:47 am

First time i have visited this site.I have read this blog,i noted that there are mostly good points which increase the importance of the blog.Nice work.Keep it up to write more good information.

July 2, 2010: 4:55 pm

I also agree.

June 30, 2010: 4:46 am

A nice blog.i think that this session will take a good, hard look at everything cool.


seo
June 20, 2010: 11:36 am

Thanks for taking the time to discuss this, I feel strongly about it and love learning more on this topic. If possible, as you gain expertise, would you mind updating your blog with more information? It is extremely helpful for me.

June 9, 2010: 12:23 pm

In my opinion, time is not some redundant information to be haphazardly buried at the bottom of a random page. Au contraire. A timeline is essential to provide an immediate context to a post. Your post lack such a context. Instead it provides 89 random characters to cope with. Nothing to relate to. Quite a loss.

June 9, 2010: 12:21 pm

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June 3, 2010: 12:38 am

I have read this post.It’s really awesome.I have noted some point which make this post excellent. I hope you will keep continue to write other informative and interesting post.Thank you.

May 20, 2010: 12:41 pm

amazing stuff thanx

April 18, 2010: 10:27 pm

I am very interested in this subject, I would like more information

March 30, 2010: 12:08 am

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March 25, 2010: 12:59 pm

It’s easy to tell that this is top notch information on the subject. Please post more like this for our education.

March 25, 2010: 12:58 pm

Thanks for the post. You have a nice take on the subject and I will be looking forward to more. I have bookmarked the site.

March 24, 2010: 1:41 pm

Great article. I tell my clients the same thing. Glad im not the only one that shares this opinion

March 24, 2010: 2:14 am

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March 11, 2010: 11:33 pm

Good and informative post,it helped me as well as my friends, I really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing.

February 26, 2010: 8:08 am

Yes date in URL’s is not much significant.

February 20, 2010: 9:28 am

Thanks for the URL info, very helpful!

February 17, 2010: 5:18 am

This is one of the best post I have ever read, I would love to read more in future. Keep up the good work.

February 16, 2010: 5:45 am

Great post.keep posting us this type of wonderful information.We always look forward towards your post.

February 11, 2010: 6:37 am

It was another joy to see your post. Really useful Post. Great stuff as usual.

February 11, 2010: 4:40 am

I want to have the Date/Time (timestamp) embedded onto a group of digital photo’s I took. My Camera (GE A730) does no support this feature so I need a computer application that will somehow use the date/time from the file attributes and imprint them (in a location of my choosing - upper left corner)…..
Is there such a program? Thank you.

February 8, 2010: 9:45 pm

thanks for posting here

December 16, 2009: 6:34 am

very nice post. This is very informative . Thanks for posting this here.

December 9, 2009: 3:52 am

time is always play a big part on doing in word press because this is the very important step in doing it.

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