# When was this page published or updated?

> Enter a URL to see the publication and update dates the page itself declares, how long ago that was, and which part of the page the date was read from. No date is guessed.

Canonical page: https://clawifi.dev/tools/page-date-checker

Run it on the page: enter a URL and get its published and updated dates, with where each one was read from, as JSON. No key needed: https://clawifi.dev/tools/page-date-checker

## What it does

- Reads the page through Clawifi and reports `published_at` and `modified_at`, each in UTC when the page gives a time zone, and how long ago that was.
- Takes each date from the first source that has one: the page’s JSON-LD (`datePublished`, `dateModified`), then date meta tags in the `<head>` (such as `article:published_time`), then a `<time>` element marked as the publication or update date in the page’s article.
- Uses the server’s `Last-Modified` header for the update date only when the page has none, and not when the header just says “now”. Shows the page’s title and canonical address too.

## Limits

- A date written only as text (“Updated last week”) is not read; neither are dates in comments, sidebars or related-article lists.
- A page that lists several articles with different dates, such as a blog index, gets no publication date.
- The dates are what the page declares. Some sites update the date without changing the content, or the other way round.
- 12 runs a minute per address, shared with the other free tools.

## Do this from your agent

Every Clawifi page read carries these fields: `published_at`, `modified_at`, `fetched_at` and `date_source`. The hosted MCP server’s `scrape_url` returns them without a key as a trial (12 a minute and 50 a day per address).

**MCP**

```text
scrape_url(url="https://example.com/blog/post", formats=["metadata"])
```

**cURL**

```sh
curl https://api.clawifi.dev/scrape \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $CLAWIFI_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"url":"https://example.com/blog/post","formats":["metadata"]}'
```

**Python**

```python
from clawifi import Clawifi

client = Clawifi()  # reads CLAWIFI_API_KEY
page = client.scrape("https://example.com/blog/post", formats=["metadata"])
print(page.get("published_at"), page.get("modified_at"), page.get("date_source"))
```

Read more: [Fetch and scrape](https://clawifi.dev/docs/fetch) · [Changelog: dates in 1.7.0](https://clawifi.dev/changelog) · [Remote MCP](https://clawifi.dev/docs/remote-mcp) · [Docs](https://clawifi.dev/docs) · [Pricing](https://clawifi.dev/pricing)

## Questions

### How can I tell when a web page was last updated?

Enter its URL above. The tool reads the dates the page declares in its structured data, its meta tags or a marked `<time>` element, and falls back to the server’s Last-Modified header for the update date.

### Why does the tool say no date was found?

The page carries no date in its markup and its server sent no usable Last-Modified header. Dates written only in the visible text are not guessed, because guesses are often wrong on forums, card lists and footers.

### Which date do search engines and AI tools use?

Each one decides for itself. Declaring `datePublished` and `dateModified` in JSON-LD and showing the same dates on the page gives them one consistent answer to read.

### Why do agents care about page dates?

An agent answering a question about prices, versions or news needs to know how fresh its source is. Clawifi returns `published_at` and `modified_at` with every page so the agent can say how current its answer is.

## Other free tools

- [URL to Markdown](https://clawifi.dev/tools/url-to-markdown): A public page as clean Markdown, ready for a prompt.
- [robots.txt and llms.txt checker](https://clawifi.dev/tools/llms-txt-checker): Which AI bots a site allows, and an llms.txt structure check.
- [Agent-readability test](https://clawifi.dev/tools/agent-readability-test): Can an agent read this page? Checks, each explained.
- [Sitemap to JSON](https://clawifi.dev/tools/sitemap-to-json): A sitemap.xml as JSON: URLs and lastmod, downloadable.
- [Link extractor](https://clawifi.dev/tools/extract-links): Every link on a page as full URLs, same-site or external, as CSV.
- [Website to plain text](https://clawifi.dev/tools/website-to-text): A page’s main text as plain text, no markup, as a .txt file.
- [Find the answer on a page](https://clawifi.dev/tools/find-answer-on-page): Ask a question of a long page, get only the passages that answer it.
- [All free tools](https://clawifi.dev/free-tools): The estimator, the request builder and every tool.