A <time datetime> element gives an unambiguous date; prose dates require parsing and are frequently misread.
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How this rule is weighted
- Importance
- 3 / 10
- How much this matters relative to other rules.
- Confidence
- SPECIFICATION
- A standard says so: HTML, WCAG, an RFC or Google's own documentation.
- Severity
- info
- How the finding is presented when it fails.
- Scoring
- Excluded
- Reported in the report, never penalised.
Impact is importance multiplied by the confidence tier’s weight — SPECIFICATION 1.0, RESEARCH 0.7, EMERGING 0.3, EXPERIMENTAL 0.1. Two rules backed by the same class of evidence therefore always carry the same weight, which is what makes the score reproducible rather than hand-tuned.
Questions about this rule
- Does AEO_TIME_ELEMENTS affect my score?
- No. It is a detection rule: it runs, appears in your report and never penalises you. "Dates marked with machine-readable time" is information about the page rather than a defect - most pages are not expected to satisfy it.
- What does SPECIFICATION confidence mean?
- A standard says so: HTML, WCAG, an RFC or Google's own documentation. Confidence is a declared tier rather than a per-rule number, so every rule backed by the same class of evidence carries the same weight - which is what makes the score reproducible instead of hand-tuned.
- How do I check AEO_TIME_ELEMENTS on my own site?
- Paste your URL into the box above and it runs only this rule, usually in a couple of seconds. It is also included in the Answer Engine checker and in a full scan.
Tags
- aeo
- content-structure
Related Answer Engine rules
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- FAQPage schema presentFAQPage JSON-LD gives answer engines a structured, unambiguous question/answer pair to cite directly.AEO_FAQ_SCHEMA
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- Page has a <main> landmarkA <main> element tells an extractor which part of the DOM is the content rather than navigation, ads and footer.AEO_SEMANTIC_MAIN