If you want to get the IDs of the latest updated rows it during a query you can do something like that SET @updatedrows := null; /*we will store here the IDs*/ UPDATE mytable SET coltoupdate = 'mycontent' WHERE myID > 5 AND (SELECT @updatedrows := CONCAT_WS(', ', myID, @updatedrows)); SELECT @updatedrows; /*shows the updated IDs*/ If the rows have already been updated via other queries that you are not aware of you, as far as I know, you must have a column (ex. lastmodified) in the database that must be updated each time that you do modifications. To have *automatic* modifications it's better to use the triggers, if supported by your mysql version. (https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/create-trigger.html ) /*adding the lastmodified col to the table*/ ALTER TABLE mytable ADD lastmodified DATETIME NOT NULL; /*creating the trigger*/ CREATE TRIGGER updatelastmodified BEFORE UPDATE ON `mytable ` FOR EACH ROW SET NEW.lastmodified = NOW(); After ...