Google's John Mueller confirmed an unusual SEO myth that said that the date filter in the Google Search tools will show you how pages ranked in the search results during that date range. John confirmed this is not true, all it does is filter search results that were published around that date range.
The date filter tool in Google Search is not some sort of time machine to back track and see how well a site ranked for a query in the past.
Chris Silver Smith asked the question after having some sort of argument with an SEO who believed this to be true. He said on Twitter "I've had a preposterous argument with a so-called SEO "expert" who insists that the Date Range search tool shows historic rankings of content, and not just content published within the specified range. Could you confirm it doesn't represent historic rankings?"
Here is that tweet:
Hey, @JohnMu - I've had a preposterous argument with a so-called SEO "expert" who insists that the Date Range search tool shows historic rankings of content, and not just content published within the specified range. Could you confirm it doesn't represent historic rankings? pic.twitter.com/cuCtWkmlXf
— Chris Silver Smith (@si1very) March 30, 2022
John replied that Chris is correct, that it does not show how the rankings were in Google during that date range:
You're correct - it's just a filter for the recognized date on a page (which is sometimes hard to get right). The advanced search page ( https://t.co/NH05DOHtiw ) uses the wording "narrow your results by..." for this.
— 🦝 John (personal) 🦝 (@JohnMu) March 30, 2022
Let, Danny Sullivan also said the same response - saying "it does not."
It does not.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) March 31, 2022
The funny things we sometimes make up and I guess I can understand why someone would think this, but I never imagined this before - so I am glad we have Twitter.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
