Every lastmod date in the sitemap is over a year old
What it is
Every <lastmod> date Asky could read in this sitemap is more than 365 days old. Either the dates are frozen, for example set once during an import or migration and never updated since, or nothing listed in this sitemap has changed in a year.
Why it matters
Frozen dates send no signal when a page does change, so updates reach Google and Bing more slowly. Bing ties that freshness signal to its AI generated answers as well as its search results. If the content really has not changed, the finding points to pages that may be due for a review.
How Asky checks it
Asky reads each sitemap it uses during its daily site discovery and at the start of each technical audit, measuring age from the moment of the check. It is reported only when every entry with a <lastmod> holds a date more than 365 days old, so one recent date clears it. Entries without a date are left out, while a date it cannot read counts as recent, as does a future date. With no dates at all the missing lastmod issue is raised instead. The details give the number of stale entries.
Reported as an opportunity with low severity.
How to fix it
- Compare a few entries with their pages: did the content change after the date shown?
- If it did, the dates are frozen. Fix the generator so it writes each page’s last content change, not an import or migration timestamp.
- If it did not, decide which pages deserve an update, revise them, and let the sitemap pick up the new dates.
- Do not set every date to today to clear the finding. Bing may disregard lastmod values that always match the current date.
- To leave it as it is: if this sitemap covers an archive that is deliberately unchanged, mark the issue resolved.
Example
A migration stamped every entry in https://example.com/sitemap.xml with the same date. After the generator fix, each entry shows its own last edit:
<!-- Before: the import date on every entry -->
<lastmod>2024-03-02</lastmod>
<!-- After: the page's real last content change -->
<lastmod>2026-08-14</lastmod>