Citing a website in your research paper or essay can be difficult and frustrating, but there are a few techniques you can use to find the publication date. To find out when an article or page was published, check the website and its URL for a date. Alternatively, do a simple Google search for the website using a special URL operator that can reveal the date. If you need to know when the website itself was published, you can search the source code . While you can find the publication date of most websites, you may not always be able to find it. Below are methods to help you solve your problem.
Method 1: Using a Google Operator
1) Copy the website URL and paste it into the Google. Use your cursor to highlight the URL, then right-click and select copy. Then, go to the Google homepage and paste the URL into the search box. Don't hit search yet because you're going to add to the URL.
- Make sure you copy/paste the full address.
2) Type “inurl:” in front of the page URL and hit search. This is an operator that will help you find more information about the website URL link. First, place your cursor in front of the website URL. Then, type “inurl:” in front of the website. Do not leave any spaces. After adding the operator, hit search.
- Do not include the quotation marks.
- This may sound complicated, but you don't have to do anything special to use this operator. All you need to do is type it in and Google will handle the rest.
3) Add “&as_qdr=y15” after the URL, then search again.
Place your cursor in the browser's address bar after the URL you just searched. Then type "&as_qdr=y15", removing the quotes. Press search again to bring up the final list of results.
- You can copy/paste the code if it's easier for you.
Variation: You can use the functions Ctrl + L in Firefox and Chrome or Alt + D in Internet Explorer to place the cursor at the right place in the search box.
4) Check the results to find the date listed in the website description. Scroll through the search results. You should see the link at the top of the page. Look on the left side of the page to find the date. In most cases, you will see it there.
- If you don't see the date there, then it may not be available. At that point, you might try to find the publication date of the website by searching the website's source code to help you decide if the information is worth reporting as a "no date" website.
Method 2: Search the source code
1) Right-click on the page and select “View Page Info.” Once you click the menu option, a new window or tab will open filled with the code from the website. It may seem overwhelming, but you don’t need to figure it out to find the date.
- Depending on your browser, the message may say “View Page Source”.
Variant: The keyboard shortcut to directly open the source code is Control + U on Windows and Command + U on Mac.
2) Open the “Find” feature in your browser using Control + F or Command + F. The “Find” feature will allow you to easily search the source code for the date. If you are using Windows, press Control + F to open this feature. For MAC, use Command + F to search the code.
Variation: You can also access the “Find” function by clicking Edit in the top menu bar and clicking “Find…” in the drop-down menu.
3) Search for “datePublished”, “publishdate” or “published_time”. Type one of the search terms and press enter. The “Find” function will search the entire page code for the search. You will then be taken directly to where the information.
- If none of the search terms work, type “publish” in the “Find” function. This may bring up the publishing information.
- If you want to know when a web page was last changed or updated, search the source code for “modified”.
4) Search for the date listed in the year-month order. Read the section of code found in the “Find” function. The date will be immediately after the term you searched for. The year will be listed first, followed by the month and day.
- You can use this date to reference the website or determine how old its information is.
