I've posted about this a lot as I use site:reddit.com extensively.
I've noticed this too. I think Google Search is updating the page's timestamp in the search cache every time anything changes on the page itself. So if the sub's admins change any content that displays on every page in the sub, like the rules/guidelines section or stickies a post for example, Google Search is considering it a page update even if the post itself is old.
If that's impossible they should at least keep track of page history independently of what the page itself says. Especially when it's very obviously just done to cheat the algo. There's no way for an archived 7 year old reddit article to actually change, and honestly even in an active post I don't see any reason for updating the timestamps.
This has been frustrating me to no end.
Te results on Google will show the reddit posts with dates within the last 6-12 months for the posts, then when I click into the post it was actually made 3-4 years ago.
There will be "<Post title - reddit.com> - 05/05/21", then you click that link, and the post was actually made 7 years ago, with the last comment being 7 years ago.
If this problem was solved then it's game over.
site:reddit.com also works and we'll be adding a reddit tab in results soooooon
lots more examples of time-based queries in this view of my twitter timeline, https://twitter.com/search?q=dotdotjames%20breezethat.com&sr...