When researching a topic, it’s important to make sure your sources are up to date. When you write an academic paper, publication dates are often needed in the citations.
Most of the time, getting the date is easy: just look on the website and search for the publication date to find it how new it was. Things get a little more complicated when there is no date listed on the website. In that case, how do you know when a webpage was published?
Reading: How to know about a website was created
In and around the page itself
The first place to look to find out when a webpage was published is in and around the page itself around. Most of the time, an article’s publication date should appear next to the author’s name just above the article. On rare occasions, this information may appear below the article.
A less accurate, but still useful, way of estimating a webpage’s publication date is to look at the comments. When was the first comment written? This gives you an idea of how old an article is and how relevant the information it contains is.
Finally, some blogs and websites automatically format the article date into the page URL, so sneak a peek check the address bar to see if you can find any clues.
One final note: check to see if the page has an update date. An older article might state that it was originally published five years ago, but at the end of the post you might find a second date that says the article was updated six months ago.
View Source
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You can use your browser to view the source code behind most websites. You can often find out when a webpage was published by looking through the code.
First, go to the webpage or article for which you need the date. You must be on the exact page and not just the home page of the site.
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Right-click on this webpage and a list of options will appear in a pop-up menu. Select View Page Source from the list.
The web page layout is rearranged and a window opens on the right showing the page source code. This is the HTML code executed by the browser to display the version of the page that appears on your screen. Every detail regarding the creation and layout of the web page is mentioned in the source code if you know what to look for.
4. After opening the page source, use the Ctrl F key combination to open the search bar.
5. Type “Publish” in the bar to highlight each line in the source code that uses the word.
All you have to do is read the entire line, wherever the word ” Publish” occurs. One of these lines contains the date the webpage was created.
You can also search for “Modified” and follow the same steps as above to find the date the article was modified.
With Google
Often a Google search for your site will show when a webpage has been published. Open the webpage with the unknown release date. Copy the URL into a Google search box and search. While there is a much more complicated way to do this, the simpler method is to select a time period for which data should be displayed next to each result in the search list.
Sometimes the last published date is used a web page automatically displayed in Google, such as Take this search below.
If you don’t see a date, click Tools just above the search results. Open the Anytime drop-down box and select Custom Range.
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Enter a large range. As a rule, looking back about 10 to 15 years ensures that even old websites have a date. Otherwise, if the web page is older than the range you entered, the result will disappear from the search results list. If you know a page was published within a certain period of time, you only have to go back that far.
Using the Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is a website that is in the Keeps track of how websites evolve over the years. If a website isn’t very popular, it might not show up in the Wayback Machine. However, if you get a hit from the machine, you can estimate roughly when the webpage was published.
First go to the Wayback Machine, then type in the address of the website you want. Check the address bar the website.
When you click Search History, the Wayback Machine will check to see if it can find any logs from the website. If this is the case, a calendar with all the collected snapshots is displayed. Find the earliest possible date for a rough estimate of when the page was published; at least you know the site existed at least during that time!
Using Carbon Dating the Web
Carbon Dating the Web is a handy tool that provides a rough estimate of when the website was created. When its developers tested it on sites where the creation date was known, it had a 75 percent success rate when it came to when it was created. It’s very easy to use: just enter the URL of the webpage in the box and click “Carbon Date!”
The website will then give you an estimated creation date for the website you provided.
You can even download the Carbon Dating the Web application for local use if you find yourself searching a lot. Just click the link on the website to download.
Conclusion
Whether you are researching a publication or just want to know when a webpage was published, this can It can be frustrating when the webmaster doesn’t add a date to his articles. Luckily, there are ways to get a rough idea of when a page went up. It may not always be 100 percent accurate, but it can give you a good idea of how up-to-date the article is.
Which method do you prefer? Know of a method we’ve overlooked? Let us know below.
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