Short answer: Always.
Here’s why.
A few blogs, even mainstream news sites, bury or even leave off date stamps from their posts. They do this – although there are exceptions – because quite often they re-post content and don’t want readers to work out something is weeks, even months or years old.
That’s crazy because:
- If the content is good enough – and it usually is, to make the ‘repeat’ schedule – no one will mind.
- Readers work out that it’s old. Their most common tactic? Scrolling down to reader comments and looking at the date stamps on those. And because we’re talking about top-notch content there are often many comments.
There might be mitigating circumstances. Some organisations, even professional media companies, might be working with poor content management systems and getting dates or times added isn’t a priority.
Other sites and blogs might be looking for a cleaner look but leaving out page clutter.
And note we’re mainly talking about date stamps. Date plus time stamps are preferable but this post is about walking before running.
* photo credit: skagman via photopin cc
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