SEO Test Shows Adding Month and Year to Title Tags Had a 5% Uplift for Organic Sessions

In this test for a listing site (think real estate, jobs, coupons etc.), the test was adding “in January 2020” to title tags (the test was done in Jan 2020) to see if there will be a positive impact on rankings. The idea was to try to demonstrate the freshness of their listings is by including the date of the most recent update in titles or meta descriptions.

This test was a conclusive positive result, with the variant title outperforming the control group by 5%. Subsequent tests in other months showed that regardless of the time of year, including a freshness signal in the form of the current month and year in the title tag was beneficial for organic traffic. They also tested other title variations replacing the month and year with things like price, or other keywords, and these have been negative.