Find out index date of Google search result

Question

Is there any possibility to get detail information on when I specific page that appears in the Google search results, was indexed?

Background:

I have been contacted by a company that claims that I would have used one of theire pictures in a WordPress blog without their permission.

On first sight the claim does not make any sense, since they refere to an URL myblogurl.xyz/some-strange-title-i-never-used and an article that would not make any sense on my blog (tec related blog that should post an article about horse care...).

This page never existed on my blog and I have no idea what they are talking about.

BUT: When I search google for some strange title i never used it shows my blog as search result. The links leads to an error 404 page but since the page is listed in the search results, it seems to have existed at some point in time...

Some month ago the Wordpress page was hacked and used to send spam mails. I was notified by my provider the next day and cleaned everything up. The only idea I have is, that maybe this page was inserted during this attack.

Long story short: I would like to know at what date & time Google found that page in my blog. Is there any public API/Menu/Archive that can provide this kind of information? Is it possible to the page as it was indexed (the complete content)?

I already tried to find the page in the Google Cache, but without any result...

Of course I can contact Google direktly but my experience is, that the answer (if they answer at all) will take some time. Since the company set a deadline to settle the claim, I would need the information much faster.

Answer 1

I would like to know at what date & time Google found that page in my blog.

Check your server's access logs. This will tell you (an analysis tool will help) when this page was first requested, the HTTP status of this page, how often it was requested and when Googlebot first visited. You can also see when the page was "fixed" and started returning a 404. Although this won't specifically tell you when Google "indexed" the page. You can see when the first users visited this page by clicking on the result in the SERPs (by checking the HTTP Referer).

Also check "links to your site" in Google Search Console, just in case this page has any inbound links (connected with the initial hack).

Although on face value this does sound like it could be a scam? Have you validated this company? If the page they quote results in a 404, how do they back up their claim? What evidence do they have that this page existed and do you know what image they are referring to? Where was this image supposedly hosted? On your site or linked externally?

Answer 2

you could have a look at the way back machine, too:

https://archive.org/web/