Honest Lastmod

Keep your last-modified date honest. A tiny WordPress plugin that stops the modified date from changing when the content did not actually change - so your sitemap lastmod and schema dateModified stay trustworthy.

The problem

Search engines use a page's last-modified date to decide how often to re-crawl it. Google and Bing both treat lastmod as a signal, and both ignore it entirely once they learn it cannot be trusted.

On a normal WordPress site the modified date gets bumped on almost every save: fixing a typo, editing a category, changing an SEO title, a bulk edit, or another plugin re-saving the post. None of that changes the content a reader sees, yet every one of them tells crawlers "this page is fresh". Over time the signal becomes noise.

What it does

Honest Lastmod compares the real content before and after each save. If nothing meaningful changed, it keeps the previous modified date. If the content changed, the date updates as usual.

It works on the post's modified date - the value that the WordPress core sitemap, Yoast, Rank Math, All in One SEO and SEOPress all read for both sitemap lastmod and schema dateModified. That means it fixes the signal everywhere at once, without touching any other plugin's sitemap.

Features

• Holds the modified date when the content is unchanged.
• Optional typo tolerance: ignore very small edits (configurable percentage).
• Freeze the date on any individual post.
• One-click "mark as updated now" when you genuinely refreshed a page.
• Activity log so you can see exactly what happened and why.
• A column in the posts list showing the honest date and the last decision.
• No database tables, no front-end output, no external requests, no dependencies.

Screenshots

Posts list column with Held / Bumped / Frozen badges:

Activity page:

Settings page:

Installation

1. Download the latest release ZIP from the Releases page.
2. In WordPress, go to Plugins > Add New Plugin > Upload Plugin.
3. Choose the ZIP, click Install Now, then Activate.
4. Go to Honest Lastmod > Settings and pick which post types to manage.

How it works

On every save of a managed post type, the plugin normalises the content (strips tags and whitespace) and compares it with the previously stored version:

• Identical content - the modified date is kept (logged as Held).
• Content changed - the modified date updates normally (logged as Bumped).
• Frozen post - the date is always kept.

The optional typo tolerance lets you also hold the date for changes below a chosen percentage, so a one-word fix does not count as an update.

Compatibility

Because the plugin only controls the post's modified date, it does not replace or interfere with your sitemap. It has been built to work alongside:

• WordPress core sitemaps (6.5+)
• Yoast SEO
• Rank Math
• All in One SEO
• SEOPress

After activating, confirm on your own site that the lastmod value in your sitemap and the dateModified in your JSON-LD reflect the honest date.

Frequently asked questions

Does it change how my SEO plugin builds the sitemap? No. It only controls the post's modified date. Your existing sitemap plugin keeps working; it just reads a more accurate date.

Will it hide real content updates? No. When the content changes, the date is bumped as usual.

Does it collect any data or call external servers? No. Everything stays on your site.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue to discuss larger changes before submitting a pull request.

Author

Built by Dobromir Panov - dpanov.com

License

GPLv2 or later. See LICENSE.