Invented facts in metadata

Forbidden: lastModified: new Date() in a sitemap; a datePublished filled in because the field existed; an author, rating or price nobody supplied
Instead: Emit a field only where a real value exists in the content. Leave it out otherwise.

What this rule looks like

Forbidden

Instead

Why this rule

A date that is today's on every request is false on every request, and repeated daily it teaches the crawler to disbelieve the field. Structured data is a claim about facts, and a wrong one is worse than a missing one.

Kind: Rule
Section: Things to avoid
Group: Search and sharing
Bucket: mechanical
Severity: warning
Detector: metadata
Since: v0.14.0

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