Question: How can you check when a page was last crawled by Google?

Checking when a web page was last crawled by Google is useful for understanding how frequently Googlebot visits the page, which can help in assessing and improving your SEO strategies. Here’s how you can find out the last crawl date:

1. Google Search Console

The primary tool for checking when your page was last crawled by Google is the Google Search Console. To use this tool, you must verify your site ownership. Once done, follow these steps:

• Navigate to 'Coverage' from the dashboard.
• Select the 'Valid', 'Error', 'Valid with warnings', or 'Excluded' tab.
• Click on any URL listed to see details about that URL, including the last crawl date.

2. Cache Date in Google Search

You can also check the approximate last crawled date via Google's cached version of the page:

• Perform a Google search for the URL you want to check.
• Click on the green down arrow next to the URL in the search results.
• Choose 'Cached' to view the cached copy.
• The top of the cache page typically shows the date it was last fetched by Google.

3. Server Logs

Checking your server logs is another method to find out exactly when Googlebot accessed your website. This involves analyzing the access logs of your server for entries from Googlebot. Look for lines with the Googlebot user-agent string and note the timestamps.

Each of these methods can give you insights into how often Google's crawler visits your page, which is crucial information for troubleshooting indexing issues or corroborating that recent content changes have been acknowledged by Google.