Find the date a web page was last updated

Here’s a neat trick for finding the date the content on a web page was last updated if it’s not clear from the page itself:

1. Open the web page in a browser window.
2. In the address box, type Javascript:alert(document.lastModified) then press Enter.
3. The date and time the page was last updated is displayed in a pop-up window (NOTE: The date is mm/dd/yyyy format).

NOTE: This trick DOES NOT work with content that’s generated dynamically — for that content, you’ll always get the current date and time displayed. But for a static website, you’ll get the actual date and time the content was last updated.

(This trick is courtesy of Gerri Berendzen’s presentation — ‘Is this resource reliable?’ — at the ACES conference in 2018. Thanks Gerri! And thanks also to Dave Gash who added the ‘alert’ bit to create a pop-up window and not overwrite the web page.)