How to Find Out When a Page Was Last Updated
August 2, 2010 by Evan Kline 
4 Comments
Have you ever been curious to find out when a web page was updated? There’s a little trick that you can use to determine the date and time that a specific page was updated. Simply type the following into your address bar, and then hit “Enter” on your keyboard:
javascript:alert(document.lastModified)
This only works on some pages, and your browser must be javascript-enabled for it to work. If you want to automate this with a bookmark, WorldStart.Com has some instructions, which basically involves placing the above code in the address line of a bookmark.
In my experience, this isn’t foolproof. A site needs to have date information contained in its code, either because the developer placed it there manually, or because the system upon which the site runs did it automatically. When it works, though, it is a handy trick.
When Was It Updated? [WordStart.Com]
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Actually, Java is not required to use javascript:alert(document.lastModified); It is JavaScript that needs to be enabled.
An easier way (no need to remember JavaScript) is to right click on a page and select “Properties” (IE) or “View Page Info” (Firefox).
Thanks for the clarification and the tip, Roshan. I’ll fix the post.
Hi Evan,
Thanks for the post. However this does now work for blogs which is a sham. For example this posts page’s last update was shown as 10/06/2010 19:06:21.
Probably the fact that the pages are created dynamically it does not work therefore it would not work for websites which are CMS based as pages are created on the fly.
Is there another option to find out when the page was updated last?
Thanks in advance.
Yes, the site really has to support it, so if something is dynamically generated like a WordPress site, it won’t work. I don’t know if there would be a way to determine it otherwise, as the site would really need something in its source code to be able to determine that.