Search before date parameter

General
1

I am curious whether passing the search_before_date to the search api will truly only return cached versions of the pages that do not contain any information past that or whether only the original publication date is considered for filtering but the content of the retrieved page could have been updated?

e.g. if a news article was posted at date x but was modified at date x+10, will the content of x be returned if I set the date to x+1?

2

No. The filter checks publication date only and returns the current version of the page, including any updates made after publication