How to Browse an Old Version of a Website

This wikiHow teaches you how to use the Internet Archive's "Wayback Machine" tool to view archived snapshots of Web pages.

Steps

  1. Image titled Browse an Old
    1
    Go to https://web.archive.org in a Web browser.
  2. Image titled Browse an Old
    2
    Enter the URL of the web page you want to browse. You can also enter keywords to search for a page as well.
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  3. Image titled Browse an Old
    3
    Select a year in the timeline. If an archived snapshot is available, a vertical black bar will appear in the timeline for each time a snapshot of the page was archived.
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    4
    Scroll down and click on a date highlighted with a blue or green circle. This will either take you directly to the older version of the website or open a pop-out menu with a list of times.
    • The blue and green circles represent the dates on which the snapshot was archived by the Internet Archive's Web crawler.
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    Click on a time in the pop-out menu. If a pop-out menu appeared, it will list several times that day the website was archived. Select a time to see what the website looked at during that time on the date you specified.
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Community Q&A

  • Question
    Are there any pages that are not archived when browsing for old versions of websites?
    Community Answer
    Community Answer
    You may find this to be the case, as when some website administrators update their websites, their changes automatically trigger the creation of a new web page with a slightly different URL. This will not have been archived and an older version of the same page will not be available.
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About This Article

wikiHow Staff
Co-authored by:
wikiHow Staff
wikiHow Staff Writer
This article was co-authored by wikiHow Staff. Our trained team of editors and researchers validate articles for accuracy and comprehensiveness. wikiHow's Content Management Team carefully monitors the work from our editorial staff to ensure that each article is backed by trusted research and meets our high quality standards. This article has been viewed 792,395 times.
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Co-authors: 20
Updated: March 29, 2022
Views: 792,395
Categories: Websites
Article SummaryX

1. Go to https://web.archive.org
2. Type the URL where it says "Enter URL."
3. Click on a year in the timeline.
4. Click on a date highlighted in blue or green.
5. Select a time in the pop-out menu.

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