A Web page is a source of information where content published on the Internet is placed, its creation date says a lot about its identity, even more, if it is well-positioned.
However, the date when a page was started is not always known, so there are concerns about this detail and surely you have wondered how to know the date of a Web page?
If as a user you visit a Web site is because you are looking for something, such concern is motivated by the interest to know information and details that are usually in the content of the Web page.
When you think you find what you are looking for, it is very important that you know the creation date of the Web page. This detail tells you if the page is updated or outdated, and one of the things that are of great interest in a page is precise that it is kept updated since previously published information is not always as valuable as a recent one.
How to Know the Creation Date of a Web Page?
To find out the creation date of a Web page, even when it seems easy, has its routes and tricks, the reasons to know the creation date of a Web page can be several, for example:
- When a study or analysis of a Web page is being carried out.
- To know when the Web page was last updated.
- When you are looking for articles related to topics of interest in order to have references.
- Knowing the age of a page reveals how long it has been operating and if we add to this the continuous or permanent updates, you will have a very acceptable web page.
To know the date on which a web page was first published on the Internet, you must first know that there are three dates associated with any page.
First is the date of publication: this is the date on which an article or web page is first uploaded to a public website, where both search engines and people can find and access that page.
Second is the indexed date: this is the date on which search engine spiders first reveal that web page on the Internet. Since Google has become an excellent crawler of new content, the date of the first crawl is generally equal to the actual publication date.
The third is the cache date: this refers to the date on which the Google robot last crawled the web page. These search engines crawl periodically or even daily for example news pages in order to detect the update of the contents and check whether they have been changed or not.
Here is how to find out the creation date of a web page first published on the Internet.
- Copy the complete URL of any web page you are interested in knowing its date, go to com, and in the search box paste the operator inurl: next to the address of the web page you are interested in knowing for example inurl: https: //www.(you put the URL of the page)
- Press Enter and the URL in the address bar of your browser will read something like this: https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:https://www….
- Go to the address bar of your browser and if your PC is running Windows press Ctrl + L and if it is a Mac press Cmd + L and add & as_qdr = y20 at the end of the Google search URL and press Enter again.
- The changed Google search URL will become:https://www.google.com/search?q=inurl:https://www… com&as_qdr=y20
- The parameter as_qdr = y20 tells Google to do a date-based search and retrieve the pages that the Google robot has indexed in the last 20 years, you put 20 for example to crawl the last 20 years i.e. everything.
This may seem complex, just follow the steps to use this operator and Google will take care of the rest.
Google can crawl any Web page at the time it is published on the Internet and the indexed date that appears in the search results is accurate.
There are Web pages that have edited their creation date in numbers and very small letters and also choose soft colors, which implies to put the eye well to detect it, so before doing any procedure to know the date of creation of a Web page, it is good that you put the eye well to the site.
How to Know the Updating Date of a Web Page?
Not everyone takes for certain what is published on web pages, the doubt is always an ally of the diligent user, questioner, researcher, or accurate and this happens because many published content may be obsolete or outdated and that is where the dates are key, this leads us to ask How to know the date of update of a Web page?
Many web pages do not show the last date and time they were updated. Here is a hint that you can follow to know the date of update of a Web page.
Through Google search
- Open the web page you want to see the last update date.
- Copy everything after the last forward slash.
- Paste what you copied into Google search or into the multifunction box at the top of your browser and then hit Enter.
- At the top of the search results, you will see the date indicating the last time the web page was modified or updated.
How to View Lost Web Pages?
If you are unable to access a web page you intended to open, the reasons can be anything from a temporary network problem to a page being completely removed from the website, so if I am interested in finding out about pages I can’t find How to view lost web pages?
It is possible to recover backup versions of web pages with a little explanation and practice. The whole process to follow is simple and you will find it very useful if you are researching a topic and discover that the links you have been storing for a while no longer work because they do not appear on the web.
One option is to use the Wayback Machine tool
Wayback Machines is one of the best tools to recover any deleted web page, as such it is part of the non-profit organization called Internet Archive, whose mission is and has been to duplicate all the content on the Internet.
How to use it?
- Open the Wayback by Google website at the following address http://web.archive.org/
- Enter the URL of the website you want to retrieve in the box at the top, where indicated.
- Click on “browse history” and a calendar will appear.
- Select the year at the top and then the date from the list of months and search.
- It will show you a saved version of the page from that date.
If what you are looking for is a page that was deleted not too long ago, the option to find it is easier, through a search engine either Google, Yahoo or Bing. As long as you can find the web page in a search engine, you should also be able to load a backup copy of the page. How do you do this?
- Open the search engine of your choice. We recommend Google caching as it is one of the most comprehensive.
- Paste the link of the web page you are looking to retrieve into the search bar.
- Below the blue text of the link, you will notice a line of green text, this is the URL of the web page you are looking for. Click the down arrow next to the green URL text.
- Click on Caché. This will show you a saved version of the page you are looking for, plus it will show you the details of when the backup was made.
If the Web page does not load properly, then try clicking on the Text-only version at the top right. This will lose all the images that were on the page but will allow you to access the important data you need.