[Goose]

Ironically, you can Google “how does Google know the date of an article” and it will tell you :

https://developers.google.com/search/blo...t-date-for

Google determines a date using a variety of factors, including but not limited to: any prominent date listed on the page itself or dates provided by the publisher through structured markup.

I wonder which one it gives more prominence to, if they conflict.  Maybe once I’m on my computer, I’ll have a look at the code.

BC

You are correct. It is more complicated than it looks. https://cects.com/created-published-modified/ has a bit to say about it that I think makes it clear there are lots of ways this process can go off the rails. I was looking at last modified dates in HTTP headers ("structured markup)". They are not always there, although my quick look didn't find that issue. Tomorrow I will attempt to take a look at what I can get from the url in question, but it may well be that the dates in the text are all there is available. I would expect Google could always fall back to their cache and get the first time a page showed up with some resolution, but maybe they don't cross check things that way.

Update:
The HTML of the page contains
"name":"NATO Chief Tries To Stop Erdogan's Resistance To Finland, Sweden Joining Alliance","datePublished":"2022-06-04T11:20:24-04:00","dateModified":"2022-06-04T11:20:24-04:00",
Those cannonical dates indicate it was indeed published on June 4.  However, if you ask Google to determine the date of the site with
inurl:https://nationworldnews.com/nato-chief-tries-to-stop-erdogans-resistance-to-finland-sweden-joining-alliance/
you get

NATO Chief Tries To Stop Erdogan's Resistance To Finland ...
https://nationworldnews.com › nato-chief-tries-to-stop-e...

Apr 6, 2022 — Russia's war in Ukraine prompted the Nordic countries to apply to join NATO, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Sweden and ...

So it would appear Google is indeed using the "wrong date", even though the publish date is canonically present  in the HTML.

For what it's worth, CarbonDate (https://carbondate.cs.odu.edu/) fails to date this file at all. However, ATM it can't even date itself, so I assume there are not enough resources available.

[Goose]

Ironically, you can Google “how does Google know the date of an article” and it will tell you :

https://developers.google.com/search/blo...t-date-for

Google determines a date using a variety of factors, including but not limited to: any prominent date listed on the page itself or dates provided by the publisher through structured markup.

I wonder which one it gives more prominence to, if they conflict.  Maybe once I’m on my computer, I’ll have a look at the code.

BC

You are correct. It is more complicated than it looks. https://cects.com/created-published-modified/ has a bit to say about it that I think makes it clear there are lots of ways this process can go off the rails. I was looking at last modified dates in HTTP headers ("structured markup)". They are not always there, although my quick look didn't find that issue. Tomorrow I will attempt to take a look at what I can get from the url in question, but it may well be that the dates in the text are all there is available. I would expect Google could always fall back to their cache and get the first time a page showed up with some resolution, but maybe they don't cross check things that way.

Update:
The HTML of the page contains
"name":"NATO Chief Tries To Stop Erdogan's Resistance To Finland, Sweden Joining Alliance","datePublished":"2022-06-04T11:20:24-04:00","dateModified":"2022-06-04T11:20:24-04:00",
Those cannonical dates indicate it was indeed published on June 4.  However, if you ask Google to determine the date of the site with
inurl:https://nationworldnews.com/nato-chief-tries-to-stop-erdogans-resistance-to-finland-sweden-joining-alliance/
you get

NATO Chief Tries To Stop Erdogan's Resistance To Finland ...
https://nationworldnews.com › nato-chief-tries-to-stop-e...

Apr 6, 2022 — Russia's war in Ukraine prompted the Nordic countries to apply to join NATO, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused Sweden and ...

So it would appear Google is indeed using the "wrong date", even though the publish date is canonically present  in the HTML.

For what it's worth, CarbonDate (https://carbondate.cs.odu.edu/) fails to date this file at all. However, ATM it can't even date itself, so I assume there are not enough resources available.