When Was the Last Time Google Visited Your Inside Pages?

Click on the “cached” link below each search engine result and you will see the most recent version of your page accessed by Google.

It used to be that the date shown in the first line within the box on that page represented the date that Google last DOWNLOADED the page. But the problem was, Google does not re-download a page unless it has changed. This was confusing to many webmasters, who thought that Google had not visited their page in years due to the date in that first sentence, which would have said something like:

“This is G o o g l e’s cache of http://www.yourdomain.com/ as retrieved on Sep 5, 2004 01:29:14 GMT.”

Yesterday, Google announced that it was changing this date to instead reflect the last time Google visited the page, even if they didn’t find any changes to download.

This is now a quick and easy way to find out when was the last time Google visited a page, without having to dig into your log files or use a web analytics program.

For more information, visit This Page on Google’s Webmaster Blog.