Google and Bing have endorsed the implementation of WordPress 6.5 for WordPress users worldwide. The newest version prioritizes lastmod support. As a result, they can enhance their SEO practices in the right direction, increasing rankings on leading search engines.
Fabrice Canel from Bing has termed this development as a “game-changer.”
Likewise, Gary ILLyes from LinkedIn said,
“The lastmod element in sitemaps is a signal that can help crawlers figure out how often to crawl your pages.
If you’re on WordPress, since version 6.5, you have this field natively populated for you thanks to Pascal Birchler and the WordPress developer community.”
Similarly, Fabrice Canel, revealed,
“A big shoutout to Pascal Birchler, Gary Illyes, Google, and the WordPress developer community for their fantastic contribution to WordPress version 6.5.
The integration of the lastmod signal within sitemaps is a game-changer, offering for millions of websites, great data insight about when their content is changing allowing to optimize crawling activities and ensuring content freshness in search engines.
For anyone reluctant to update their WordPress installation, consider this feature a prime motivator. The more websites implement lastmod in their sitemaps, the search engines — whether AI-driven or rules-based — will increasingly capitalize on this signal.
Complimentary, please adopt https://www.indexnow.org/ to take control of crawl and your SEO game with real-time indexing. The right setup is IndexNow (for real-time update) and sitemaps with lastmod (daily – catchup mode) to ensure comprehensive and fresh coverage.
Having better online visibility isn’t just about having a website. It’s about your latest content being found.”
Gary ILLyes added,
“If you’re holding back on upgrading your WordPress installation, please bite the bullet and just do it (maybe once there are no plugin conflicts). Don’t be like Gary and still run a version 2*.
If you’re not on WordPress, try to populate it with the last significant modification date, where “significant” loosely means a change that might matter to your users and, by proxy, to your site.
I do not use WordPress, so I will schedule in to have my developers here add the lastmod date to my sitemap, at some point”.
WordPress’s significance has grown further, as more than 22% of all sites currently use the latest version, WordPress 6.5, enhancing crawl effectiveness.
The above viewpoints of representatives from Google and Bing indicate that users will need to update their current WordPress versions to the latest version, WordPress 6.6, to continue elevating their SEO activities to the next level.
