Blog
Two notes on why a sitemap date has to be true, and where a true one comes from. This listing exists to demonstrate a property static pages cannot: publishing a post changes exactly two sitemap dates, its own and this page's, and leaves every other route untouched.
Posts
- A gate only proves what it checks
The sitemap gate passed for months while the sitemap was lying, because it only ever read the locations. Scope is the first thing to ask of any check.
- What a content date actually is
File mtime, git history, and the build clock all look like content dates. None of them are. Here is what to declare instead, and why by hand lasts.
- Why lastmod has to be true
A sitemap that claims every page changed on every deploy teaches Google to ignore the freshness signal entirely. Honest and stale beats fresh and wrong.