Your Website Copyright Footer Is More Important Than You Think.
What is copyright and why is it important?
More than 100 years ago, the copyright sign, year and the phrase All Rights Reserved were combined to indicate that the work is copyrighted. A work listing a single year stated the first year of the publication.
Over time some copyrighted work listings began to show a range of time which meant that copyright protection would be applied to this period.
Writing the words All Rights Reserved is now a thing of the past. As of 2000 onward, this has become completely obsolete and has no legal effect.
However, these words continue to be very popular amongst websites across the internet. Copyright dates and All Rights Reserved is commonly found at the bottom of the website to warn that content shouldn’t be copied.
Actually, at the present time, this just means when the content was last updated on the website!
Here are the 4 most common ways that copyright dates displayed on websites:
Year and copyright
© 2021 Company Name. All rights reserved.
Year range and copyright
© 2008-2021 Company Name. All rights reserved.
Month and year (becoming a popular way to display this)
© Feb 2021 Company Name. All rights reserved.
Without any date
© Company Name. All rights reserved.
As you can see the examples above show the current year, but what if the date is not current?…
When you see websites with outdated copyright in the footer, what’s your impression? Are you confident that the information on the website is up to date? Did they desert their website?
It’s difficult to trust in something that hasn’t been updated in years. Although it seems like a small detail if they don’t care to update their website, what’s the quality of customer service they can provide me?
You can be a great company with the best products and services, but making a bad first impression can instill doubt and confusion in your potential customers. Even on a subconscious level. Customers expect that you stay on the cutting edge of development and stay up to date with technology!
This is especially important on login and payment pages! An outdated checkout page can create the impression that the technology the website uses is old and can be insecure.
When you have a current copyright notice it’s a reflection of your company character. It shows your company is current and taking an active approach in your business. It shows a level of care and concern due to your attention to detail.
For several years, Google has stated that the freshness of content plays a key role in ranking. They have numerous ways of detecting this but they do not disclose the exact signals for determining it. That being said, everything matters. Even small details such as an outdated copyright date can possibly affect your site ranking (if there isn’t any other indication of the freshness of content on your website).
While not a direct Google ranking factor, an extremely outdated footer will probably create a negative signal in determining your freshness of content.
When we were writing this article, we wanted to find some examples of outdated footers. We thought this would take a long time for us to find because it is a known essential for large companies right now and can be done automatically. But we were quickly proven by finding a few outdated footers within the Top Websites in the world. This was a WOW factor!
If some of the Top Online Companies in the world don’t care about this, you can imagine how many other website owners don’t care or just don’t know about this elementary detail!
In conclusion, we don’t think that an updated footer has a huge advantage in SEO, but an outdated year may have a negative signal. It’s better not to display the copyright date at all rather than having an outdated year on your footer. It makes your website seem dated, irrelevant and reflects poorly on your brand.
If you want to show how current your content is and make a good impression on your website visitors, ask your developer to make your copyright notice update automatically. This is very easy to do with today’s current technology.
