{"id":12759,"date":"2026-07-29T15:03:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=12759"},"modified":"2026-07-29T15:03:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T07:03:37","slug":"googles-illyes-unsure-on-shifting-unavailable_after-dates-via-sejournal-mattgsouthern","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/?p=12759","title":{"rendered":"Google\u2019s Illyes Unsure On Shifting unavailable_after Dates via @sejournal, @MattGSouthern"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p> <div id=\"narrow-cont\"> <p>Google\u2019s Gary Illyes said on LinkedIn that he\u2019d have to check whether a site can safely extend an unavailable_after date. His first read, which he called a gut feeling, was that pushing the date forward is fine, but he left open whether the tag can be trusted for pages that expire and then get renewed.<\/p> <h2>What Was Asked<\/h2> <p>SEO consultant Javier Lorente Murillo reached out to Google\u2019s Search team with a question about a classifieds site that has a steady core of around 5,000 indexed URLs and adds approximately 10,000 new listings each month. Most of these listings stay live for 24 to 72 hours.<\/p> <p>He planned to use unavailable_after on short-lived pages to avoid 404 errors and manage crawl budget. Because users can renew ads, his system would dynamically update the expiry date. He asked whether Googlebot would start to ignore a date that keeps changing with each renewal.<\/p> <p><iframe class=\"sej-iframe-auto-height\" id=\"in-content-iframe\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/www.searchenginejournal.com\/wp-json\/sscats\/v2\/tk\/Middle_Post_Text\"><\/iframe><\/p> <h2>What Illyes Said<\/h2> <p>Illyes opened by saying he didn\u2019t know:<\/p> <blockquote> <p>\u201cthat\u2019s a great question\u2026 I have no idea, I have to check.\u201d<\/p> <\/blockquote> <p>He added:<\/p> <blockquote> <p>\u201cmy gut feeling is that it\u2019s fine to push forward the unavailable_after date BUT you need to keep in mind that we\u2019ll need to crawl the page again to \u201csee\u201d the new date. it doesn\u2019t have implications on anything but index selection, where it acts as a \u201cyou can drop this now\u201d signal.\u201d<\/p> <\/blockquote> <p>In a later response to another comment on the same post, he said Google would fetch the page instead of checking it cheaply:<\/p> <blockquote> <p>\u201cwe rarely see HEAD requests so we\u2019d still download the content.\u201d<\/p> <\/blockquote> <h2>What Google\u2019s Documentation Says<\/h2> <p>Google\u2019s robots meta tag documentation explains \u2018unavailable_after\u2019 as a rule instructing Google not to display a page in search results after a specified date and time. The same page says Googlebot will crawl that URL considerably less often after that date.<\/p> <p>The page also talks about the recrawl point Illyes mentioned, highlighting that Robots meta tags and X-Robots-Tag headers are detected when a URL is crawled. This means that a changed date will only appear on the next fetch.<\/p> <p>That part of his answer echoes what Google already states. The claim that the rule touches nothing beyond index selection is his own, and it doesn\u2019t appear in the docs.<\/p> <h2>Why This Matters<\/h2> <p>Illyes didn\u2019t say what happens if the last date Google saw passes before it gets back to the page. That is the case he said he would have to check.<\/p> <p>With the renewal case unanswered, there\u2019s nothing from Google to plan around. What decides the outcome is how often Google crawls the page, and a site owner can\u2019t control that.<\/p> <h2>Looking Ahead<\/h2> <p>As of publication, Google\u2019s documentation doesn\u2019t cover an expiry date that changes on every renewal.<\/p> <p>The first call is what you\u2019re asking the unavailable_after tag to do. Letting a page drop out of search results after a set date is what Google documents it for. Keeping a page alive while leaning on the tag to manage crawl is the case that\u2019s still open.<\/p> <p><em>Featured Image: ESB Essentials\/Shutterstock<\/em><\/p> <\/div> <p>News,Technical SEO#Googles #Illyes #Unsure #Shifting #unavailable_after #Dates #sejournal #MattGSouthern1785308617<\/p> ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google\u2019s Gary Illyes said on LinkedIn that he\u2019d have to check whether a site can safely extend an unavailable_after date. His first read, which he called a gut feeling, was that pushing the date forward is fine, but he left open whether the tag can be trusted for pages that expire and then get renewed. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[8708,179,49452,90,80,4036,49454,49453],"class_list":["post-12759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-accessibility","tag-dates","tag-googles","tag-illyes","tag-mattgsouthern","tag-sejournal","tag-shifting","tag-unavailable_after","tag-unsure"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/longzhuplatform.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}