Show publication date in search results
Use a the preprocess function, template_preprocess_search_result() to add a custom authored on date variable to your search-result.tpl.php template.

function MYTHEME_preprocess_search_result(&amp;$variables) {
  //$variables['result']['node'] is the node object returned in the search results
  //the $variables['result']['node']-&gt;created property contains the authored on date
  if(isset($variables['result']['node'])) {
    $variables['created_date'] = format_date($variables['result']['node']-&gt;created, 'short');
  }
  //$created_date will be available in your search-result.tpl.php for printing
}


It's probably worth mentioning that the base template is printing out the $info variable which is the concatenation of a few vars in $info_split. Changing $info_split won't change the printed date without changing search-result.tpl.php.