Free tool
When was this article published? Check any page's dates
Paste a link to see the date the page was first published and the date it was last updated, read from every place the page records them: structured data, meta tags, the byline and the address.
Which page?
Reads the page as it is first sent, before JavaScript runs. One page per check.
Checking your own site? Dates are one column of a content audit, which decides what to keep, update, merge or delete.
Reading the page...
How the date checker works
A page usually records its dates in several places at once, and they do not always agree. The checker downloads the page once and reads all of them: the datePublished and dateModified fields in its structured data, meta tags such as article:published_time, <time> elements, a "Published" or "Updated" line in the text, a date in the address, and the server's Last-Modified header. It then shows the most trustworthy date of each kind at the top, and every date it found underneath.
How to read the result
- Published is when the page says it first went live. Structured data from an Article or BlogPosting wins, then meta tags, then the byline, then the address.
- Last updated is the most recent edit the page admits to. "Not stated" is common and not a fault: plenty of articles are never edited.
- Every date the page gives is the evidence. When three sources show the same day, you can rely on it. When they differ, the page has a problem, and the date Google shows in results can be any of them.
- Last-Modified comes from the server, not the writer. Many sites send the current time on every request, so the checker ignores it when it is today.
How to find when an article was published, by hand
Each of these works without a tool. Start at the top; the further down the list, the rougher the answer.
1. Read the byline
Look under the headline and at the very end of the article. Watch the label: many sites replace the original date with "Updated" and the edit date, so a date near the top is not always the publish date.
2. Search the page source
Press Ctrl+U (Cmd+Option+U on a Mac) to open the source, then Ctrl+F and search for datePublished, then dateModified, then published_time. These are the dates the site hands to search engines, and they are often there even when the page shows none.
3. Look at the address
Older WordPress sites and many news sites put the date in the link, as in /2024/03/15/post-name/. Images can give it away too: WordPress files uploads by month by default, so /wp-content/uploads/2024/03/ in an image's address is the month it was uploaded.
4. Ask WordPress directly
On a WordPress site, add /wp-json/wp/v2/posts?slug= and the post's slug to the domain, for example example.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts?slug=my-post. If the site has not switched this off, the reply contains "date" and "modified", straight from the database.
5. Check the Wayback Machine
Open web.archive.org/web/*/ followed by the page's address. The first capture shows the page existed by that day, so it is the latest the article could have been published. It is also the best way to see whether an "updated" article really changed.
6. Look at Google's result
Google shows a date beside many results. It is Google's choice from the page's signals, not a fact stored anywhere, so treat it as a hint and confirm it with one of the methods above.
If it is your page: make Google show the right date
Google's guide to influencing byline dates in Google Search says it "doesn't depend on a single date factor because all factors can be prone to issues". What it asks for is short:
- Show the date on the page, labelled "Published" or "Last updated".
- Put the same dates in datePublished and dateModified in the page's Article or BlogPosting structured data.
- Keep the visible and structured dates identical, with the right time zone.
- Never give a date in the future, and remove other dates on the page that could be mistaken for it.
Run your own article through the checker afterwards. A clean result has one published date and one updated date, each found in two or three places, and nothing under "Worth a look". Whether a newer date helps the page rank is a separate question; fresh content and SEO covers what Google rewards and what it ignores.
An old date does not mean a page needs work
Age is a guess at the real question, which is whether a page is losing traffic. A three-year-old guide can be gaining clicks while last month's post is already sliding. The answer is in Search Console, one page at a time.
Flowra connects to Search Console and finds the pages whose clicks and impressions are falling, then puts them in a queue to fix. The content decay report is on the Free plan.