One of our SEO clients recently asked me if I could tell him when he officially started his gmail account, so I did some quick online research using the standard search terms one would expect to produce good results like “When was my gmail account created?” and “How old is my gmail account?”. I was surprised to see that all the answers online were from 2012 to 2017. There were no recent answers at all! And all the methods that were shared between 2012 and 2017, like the POP method, no longer work 🙁
So, after a couple hours of exploring the many Google properties, I found one that is API related that shows you the actual day, month and year that you started your gmail. Here’s a quick video visually showing you how the method works:
Below are the step by step instructions I detail in the video above that you’ll need to follow to determine when your Gmail account was created.
Step 1. Go to this Google URL
Here’s what you’ll see on this page:
Step 2. Click the “Authorize and Execute” Button
When you do so, the following “Select OAuth 2.0 Scopes” popup will appear. Press the “Authorize and Execute” button again.
Step 3. Login To Your Gmail Account
You’ll then be asked to choose which Gmail account you want to login to. Here’s what that new popup will look like:
Step 4. Scroll Down To See Your Gmail Account Creation Date
Next, all you need to do is scroll down the page a little and you’ll see your Gmail account creation date. Here’s what mine looks like:
So there you go. That’s exactly how you determine what day, month and year you started your Gmail account.
If you run into any problems with this method, please let me know in the comments below.
Cheers,
Brendan Monahan
Founder of the Raleigh SEO Company
Brendan, a great video. You are correct, everything else online is outdated and google of course sadistically watches millions of people sweating over this once they hear about being locked out of their accounts.
I’ll have to think of some SEO project for my company, a this cool should be great at his job 🙂
As for the google, good bye, do-no-evil. Sick of all the snooping, and the three days I spent chatting with google’s bot army (I knew my password, my recover email, was at the usual location, on the usual machine) are the last straw.
Any recommendations for my next email service?
Thanks!
Wow outstanding video! You know your stuff. It worked for me, but this might be a dumb question.. what format is that date? Is it year-month-day or year-day-month? I rarely see dates in this format so I have no idea!
Perfect! Thank you so much. I spent an hour on YouTube earlier today trying to find the answer all the videos are from years ago. You’re the only one that had a valid and working 2019 solution. Much appreciated.
You’re very welcome Tom! If you ever need any SEO help, just let us know 🙂
at last, I found the solution, thank you
You’re welcome Niraj! Glad we could be of help 🙂
Worked great! But once the info is gathered how do I remove the OAuth scopes?
Wow, it’s cool that you posted this but that is one seriously roundabout method.
Try this, instead.:
A. Login to your GMail account
B. Click gear icon for Settings, then click ‘Forwarding and POP/IMAP’ tab.
D. Look down a few lines and you’ll see a section called ‘POP download’.
E. First line of that section will read like this:
1. Status: POP is enabled for all mail that has arrived since [Date]
…and that’s your start date, in two clicks. 🙂
MrF
Hi MrF, That’s definitely another way to try and get your gmail creation date, but it only works if you have POP enabled, which most people don’t. For example, here’s what my gmail account shows in this spot:
WOW.. I can’t believe I actually found it… Thank you soo very much !!.. I’m an old lady who knows nothing.. I mean NOTHING about computers or internet… I didn’t know how to screen shot your instructions .. so I hand wrote them out and easy to follow.. I’m so happy.. you have no idea.. xx
thanx for giving us a new method the old method is not worker and i found today new method from you thanx
Awesome! I’ve been looking for a method that actually worked in 2019 and this worked!
You. Are. Freaking. GENIUS! THIS IS AWESOME! So annoyed about Google screwing with people locked out of their accounts. WHAT’S THE POINT OF A RECOVERY PHONE AND EMAIL IF THEY WON’T LET YOU INTO YOUR ACCOUNT WITH IT?!?!?!? I’m gonna get info on all my accounts before Google finds out about this and spends their time and resources trying to figure out how to block this instead of making their products better.
Got with this trick, Thanks
Cory,
That date format is Year, Month, Date. That’s easy to figure out because of the full 4-Digit year – 2009, and then 19 cannot be the month so it must be 05 which is May. It is my usual preferred format except when filling forms that force me to do another way.
Well, it’s still working in 2020. Thanks a lot. It bugged me to no end that I didn’t know the creation dates of my (and family’s) account.
The POP option mentioned before doesn’t work on my newer accounts, only on the oldest and that date was more than a year later than the creation date I got with your method.
Thank you! Still works!
Thank you so much, I need the information to try and resolve an issue about my Microsoft Office Home & Student account.
Thank you very much for this info. I have spend the last 2 hours googling around on the web (was all initiated by another issue I had) and was super relieved to find this solution.
This method still works, although the pages look a little different. Thanks for sharing the details on this. If I ever need SEO, I’ll contact you first!
2021 and this still works. Amazed to see that I created my account in 2008.
wow, I have always wondered about it and now i have done it. thank you so much
WOW. Excellent! Thank you.
Thank you EXTREMELY much for this tip. The POP method failed for me (POP is disabled) and I have long ago purged my first emails in Gmail. As someone else noted, the screens are a little different now, and I note in both your screenshot and my data file that the date is apparently that when the user’s Google Drive file was created, while lots of people on the web are talking about when the Gmail account was created. However, both Drive and Gmail should be part of the same Google user account, so unless someone more knowledgeable out there tells me differently, I expect that the date obtained in your tip is the correct information. Thanks!
No longer works with Advanced Protection enabled, but it’s still the best method of determining account creation date that I have found.
I was genuinely surprised to check the date of this article and see May 2019! It’s 2022 and this works just fine (only difference is the ui and oauth screen is a bit different). Thanks so much. Now I can keep this handy in case i lose my password.
Btw the POP method doesn’t work just so others know.
January 2023, can confirm still working.
This method is reliable. It says my account was created in 2010. Thanks.
This method worked. Thank you very much.
2023 and this method still works. I’m not sure if there’s a better way but I couldn’t find one. Thanks a lot!
Thank you. Super easy.
I needed this because someone else is using my account.
This tells you when your Google Drive storage was created, so it also correlates to GMail account creation from the time that GMail and Google Drive storage were integrated (throughout 2009 from memory). Thanks!
Perfect! Thank you so much.