These days Google is showing dates (timestamp?) in the SERPs, I am not saying they have just started doing so, but I am sure that they are doing it more prominently now. I am always impressed with their parsing capabilities.
The date parsing is even more amazing on forum threads, on more than one occasions I have found that the date which was being shown alongside the SERP listing was that of the latest reply on the thread, not the date on which the thread was created, very nice way to show the freshness of content. Really great.
As a user, it has surely affected my search experience in a positive way. I have started taking dates in my decision making for which link to click through with in the SERP listing.
As a webmaster, it’s something more serious. This can really affect CTRs, may be marginal but remember small things do add up. As a result, I have now removed the dates on single posts on some of my blogs, why? because those blogs are not news based, their content are timeless and thus an old date in an SERP listing might become a turn off for a searcher, as it is for me.
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