Meet your new info-searching BFF
Remember those times you were scrolling through your web search results … when BAM! … there is was … the exact info you were looking for? You clicked on the link … thinking this is where that important info would be … all of a sudden up popped that dumb 404 Page Not Found message 🙁
Sooooo frustrating!
Well, I would like to introduce you to your new inf0-search best friend. Please meet the Wayback Machine!
Did you know that everything on the Web is archived? That means that there’s a history of everything ever posted. That’s the good news and the bad news! 🙂
It’s the good news because you can access that info you need … the bad news if you posted something that you wish you hadn’t! I used to tell my teacher education candidates not to post things they’d be sorry for later.
So let’s get started. Click on this Archive.Org link. Now fill in the text box (like you see above) and click on BROWSE HISTORY.
Important: Not every website history will be available. But a high percentage will be available.
This is what you’re going to see when the website history is available. Notice how far back this website history is archived.
You’ll also see a calendar. The some blue and green circles. When you hold your cursor over the date you’ll see the snapshots that were taken on that day.
Click on one and you be taken to the copy of how the website looked on that date. I’d suggest right clicking on the link and opening the snapshot in a new tab. That way you can close it and go right back to the search.
Try different dates to find the info you’re looking for.
That’s all there is to it. Use the Wayback Machine to beat that 401 message, find information on a website that is no longer available, and even retrieve old information from your own website!
Let me know how it goes when you try it out. I know there are other tools, so if you’ve tried one of them, leave a comment to share.
