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The copyright year is generally when the work was first published. Even if the site is updated regularly the copyright notice should still stay the same. For example, I launched my website in 2009 and while it does get updated on a weekly basis, the copyright still says 2009.

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I rate a sites age/last updated (And hence how useful it is) via the copyright, if it says 2009 I'll move on. I suspect may other people also do.

Unless you are in a strange place were there are legal issues, I'd keep it up to date, preferably with a dynamic year.

If you have legal issues, I'd add in a dynamic 'last updated' or range.

Are you serious?

I bet they are. I do it too, particularly if you're looking for something that has changed since a certain date. An explanation of a math technique probably hasn't changed since whenever it was posted, but if I'm looking for reviews on laptops, I don't want laptops from 2009.

I realize that date of publication of the particular article can be different from date of most recent publication, so I don't immediately throw out the site, but if it looks dormant I may leave and go to another site.

The practice then should be to put a range of years encompassing all updates, e.g., 2009-2013. If you didn't touch the site in a certain year, you'd include a list of ranges and/or specific years, e.g., 2007, 2009, 2011-2013

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