---
title: Give every page a date machines can read
description: 80% of DeepSeek’s top-10 results carried a detectable date, against 61% further down. The gap held within each authority tier.
url: https://tanujsharma.xyz/notes/put-a-date-on-every-page
author: Tanuj Sharma
published: 2026-10-23
---

# Give every page a date machines can read

DeepSeek says freshness is one of the three inputs to its rerank score. If a page has no date the engine can detect, it may be giving up part of that score.

The data points the same way. In the second run, 80% of top-10 results had a detectable date, against 61% of results ranked 11 to 50.

The obvious objection is that big, trusted sites just happen to date their pages. But the gap held within each authority tier. For tier 3 sources it was 81% against 56%.

That is still a correlation, not proof. But the fix is cheap, so I would do it anyway:

1. Show a publish date and an updated date on the page.
2. Put the same dates in structured data as `datePublished` and `dateModified`.
3. Only change the updated date when the page actually changes.

## Related

- Research: [What DeepSeek’s search API reveals about authority in AI search.](https://tanujsharma.xyz/research/deepseek-search-api-authority)
- Research: [How AI referral traffic behaves differently from traditional search.](https://tanujsharma.xyz/research/ai-referral-traffic-vs-search)
- Note: [In AI search, authority decides who reaches the first page](https://tanujsharma.xyz/notes/authority-is-a-gate-in-ai-search)
- Note: [If your page crashes in the browser, an AI fetcher only sees the error](https://tanujsharma.xyz/notes/ai-fetchers-see-what-your-server-sends)