Getly
A year in a product title feels like proof of freshness. "Social Media Templates 2026" says the thing was made for now, not recycled from a folder of old work. On 26 September 2026 we counted how many of the 7,143 active listings on Getly put a year in the title, and what those listings ask.
The number is small, the prices are high, and every one of those titles has the same date written into it: the day it starts to look old.
What the catalogue shows
Measured 26 September 2026 across the active catalogue:
- 1.58% of titles contain a year.
- Most of them say 2026. Titles containing "2026" make up 1.40% of the catalogue on their own.
- Listings with "2026" in the title have a median price of $14.50, against $7.00 for titles that contain no digit at all.
That gap is a correlation, and it deserves the usual caution. A year is a natural fit for guides, courses, planners and strategy documents, the kind of product that is often priced above a single graphic or a wallpaper, and we did not break the group down by product type. The year may be marking the product type rather than lifting the price. We cannot separate the two from this measurement, and neither can a seller looking at the table.
The problem is the calendar, not the word
The year works while it is the current year. Today, "2026" reads as current. From 1 January 2027 the same title reads as last year's edition, whatever is inside the file. Nothing about the product has changed; the buyer's calendar has.
This is the part that is easy to miss when writing the title. You write it on a day when the year is an advantage, and you do not see it on the day the advantage flips. The listing keeps the same words, the same images, the same price, and quietly starts to look out of date to everyone who opens it.
A buyer looking for current advice is exactly the buyer who notices the year. A guide titled with last year reads as unmaintained, even if you have kept it perfectly up to date. The title has made a promise about time that the listing no longer shows it keeping.
When a year belongs in the title
Some products genuinely are about a specific year, and for them the year is a feature, not decoration:
- Calendars and dated planners. A 2026 wall calendar is a 2026 product. A buyer needs to know the year before they buy, and it expires by design.
- Anything tied to rules for one year. Tax worksheets, exam preparation for a specific sitting, event schedules. The year tells the buyer whether it applies to them.
- Editions you intend to replace. If you plan to publish a new version every year, the year is how buyers tell editions apart.
For these products the right move is not to remove the year but to plan for it: know that the listing has a season, and have the next edition ready before the old one turns stale.
When a year does not belong there
Most products that carry "2026" are not dated in that sense. A guide to writing product descriptions, a set of social media templates, a pricing strategy workbook: none of them stops working in January. For these the year is doing a job that other words can do without an expiry date.
- Say what makes it current in the description. Name the platforms, versions or practices it covers. That is more convincing than a number and it does not age on a fixed date.
- Use the title for what the product is. The characters a year takes can hold a format, a count or a use instead.
- If you keep the year, set a reminder. Put a date in your calendar for early December to review every listing with a year in its title, and decide one by one whether to update, rename or retire it.
A check you can run on your own listings
- Search your shop's product list for "2025", "2026" and any other year.
- For each hit, ask: does this product stop being useful when the year ends? If yes, the year stays and the listing needs a plan for the next edition. If no, the year is optional.
- For an optional year, move the evidence of currency into the description and consider a title without the year.
- If you change a title, change only the title, note the date, and compare the listing's views and conversion before and after in your dashboard analytics. The $14.50 median is a correlation; your own listing is the only test that tells you what the year is worth to you.
What to do today
Open your product list and find every title with a year in it. Sort them into two groups: products that are about that year, and products that only mention it. Put a reminder in your calendar for early December for the first group, and for the second group rewrite one title today so that it describes the product instead of the date. The year was a good idea when you typed it; the point is to make sure it is still one on 1 January.
