Dates in Google Search aren't trustworthy

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xkcd 979 published 2011 mentions a post by DenverCoder9 in 2003.

Search google for "DenverCoder9" in 2003.

Surprise! Find a link. Web page source code tells us this is a spoof page.

So either this is an extremely elaborate spoof involving a time machine or Google has inferred a publication date from the page text. Very clever, Google is able to give an exact date to a page that it maybe only indexes infrequently, however it is possible for the page to lie and Google will happily believe and report the date it finds, even backdating the page several years.




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