Where does Google pull the date stamp?

[Aggie]

We're a news media site with content that has been live for a few years. All of a sudden, Google is showing our content (even though no one has touched the file) with a date stamp of '3 days ago'. Even for content that is years old.

I checked the date it was last cached, and it doesn't even match.  The URLs were last cached on January 16, but the date stamp says '3 days ago.'

From where does Google pull the date stamp?  Any ideas?

[TakeshiYoung]

If you have any kind of date on the page, Google will sometimes pull it and display it in the search results.  This could be from a date mentioned in an article, a comment left by a visitor, etc.  If your content is evergreen, it can be helpful to strip out dates entirely, to keep your site from looking dated in the search results.

[Aggie]

I've looked everywhere, because I suspected the same thing.  There is nothing on the page, in the comments or in the code that would create this situation virtually across the board.

It wouldn't be that big of a deal, but it's happening with tons of content.

Unfortunately, with a news media website, we have to have time stamps, but even if we didn't, I would have no clue how Google is assigning the dates that they are.