Date Stamps

What It Is

Date stamps are a best practice to help you keep content current. Provide a date stamp on your homepage, major entry points, and individual documents to show visitors that the content is current, that it's been reviewed within the past 12 months, or that it's a historical document.

Why It’s Important

• Citizens, businesses, and other governments expect the information on government websites to be valid, accurate, and current.
• Date stamps help the public know that they are seeing the most recent version of a particular document.
• Researchers, media, students, and others need to cite dates.

Specific Policy, Legal or Other Requirements for Doing This

OMB Policies for Federal Public Websites require agencies to (#1A) “disseminate information to the public in a timely, equitable, efficient and appropriate manner” and (#2A) “maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of information and services provided to the public.” By providing dates on your website, you help your visitors know that the information is timely and accurate. You improve the integrity of the information (and the reputation of your website) by showing your audience that you review the content on a regular basis.

How to Implement

• When to use date stamps: Content older than one year should be reviewed and the review date should be noted. It's not necessary to change the date last modified or updated for corrections of spelling or typographical errors.
• Where to put them: Ideally, you should have date stamps on every page (except search results pages). If that’s not possible, at least have date stamps on your home page, major entry points , and pages that change frequently.
• Recommended Terminology:
  • "Last Updated” or “Last Modified”: If the page or document has been modified or updated in the past year, a "date last modified" or "last updated" may be adequate.
  • “Last Posted”: If the page or document has been posted within the past year, the "date posted" may be adequate. Documents older than one year may appear out-of-date. At that point, it would be advisable to go to a "last reviewed" date to show that the content remains current.
  • "Last Reviewed": If content is more than one year old, it should be reviewed (unless it is a historical document that never changes). The date of that review can be used to show that the content is current.
  • "Last Certified": Some agencies use a quarterly or annual certification process to ensure that all content is reviewed regularly. In that case, the date of the last certification can be used to show the content is current.
  • "Historical Document": For pages or documents that will never change, such as news releases, official reports, final rules, etc., the date of publication can be used, along with a notation that this is a "historical document."
• Putting the current date and time on your website (“Today is December 25”) does not add value and adds clutter. It can sometimes mislead users to think that your content has been updated when that is not the case.
• Put the date on every page of a document, if possible.
• For PDF documents, include the date in the document, or in the link to the PDF, or both.
• Adopt a routine content review process—monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually—to identify obsolete content and remove it.

Examples

• The U.S. Army provides a date and time indicating when the page was last revised.
• The Medline Plus Website provides a "last updated" stamp on every page.

Many federal public websites follow this best practice. This practice is part of the guidelines and best practices published by the Interagency Committee on Government Information to aid agencies' implementation of OMB Policies for Public Websites.