Summary: “Date to old,” continues to be one of the top reasons why a news release is not included into Google News.

Including the right date with a news release is extremely important for Google News Inclusion. A task that seems so trivial can have big consequences if not done right.

We are not saying a news release must include a date. In fact, the PR Leap system already stamps the release date on the news release for you. However, some of you choose to include a date in the lead paragraph of a news release. This is good practice so long as the date is equal to the actual release date or beyond.

First Impressions Matter

If a news release includes a date older than the actual date of release, then it will not be included into Google News. Once Google News has labeled a news release with “Date to Old,” changing the date after the fact will not help.

Check, check and triple check a news release to make sure the very first date in the lead paragraph matches or is beyond the actual date of release. Also keep in mind that we are now in the year 2007. We are still seeing some news releases with 2006. We do our best to fix this problem for you, but some do manage to escapes our eyes too.

Material Dates

Some news releases must reference or disclose a material event in the opening sentence (i.e. On January 1st, 2006…). This may prevent a release from getting included into Google News because it would be confused as “Date to Old.” To counteract this, we recommend you place the actual release date before the opening sentence to show that it’s fresh news.