Wayback Machine: How to See Old Versions of Any Website

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine lets you see what any website looked like in the past. Type in a web address, pick a date, and you can browse archived versions of pages going back to 1996. We first wrote about the Wayback Machine in 2005, when it held about 40 billion pages. In October 2025, the Internet Archive celebrated passing one trillion archived web pages. Here is how to use the Wayback Machine in 2026.

Quick answer: Go to web.archive.org, enter a website address and press Enter. The calendar shows every date the page was saved; click a highlighted date to view that snapshot. To archive a page yourself, use Save Page Now on the same site. Site owners who do not want their pages shown can ask the Internet Archive to exclude them.

What is the Internet Archive Wayback Machine?

The Wayback Machine is a free service from the non-profit Internet Archive. The Internet Archive began archiving the web in 1996, working with Alexa Internet in the early years, and opened the Wayback Machine to the public in 2001. Its crawlers regularly save copies of public web pages, building a time machine for the web.

How to use the Wayback Machine

1. Open web.archive.org.
2. Type the address of a site or page and press Enter.
3. Use the timeline at the top to pick a year, then click a highlighted date in the calendar. Blue and green circles show captures.
4. Pick a time if there are several captures that day.
5. Click links in the archived page to move to other archived pages from a nearby date.

For fun, see how simple Yahoo looked on 17 October 1996 or how Google Beta looked on 2 December 1998.

Useful Wayback Machine features

• Save Page Now: archive any public page instantly from the Wayback Machine home page.
• Browser extensions: official extensions for Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari let you save the current page or jump to old versions, and can offer an archived copy when you hit a 404 error.
• Changes view: compare two captures of the same page to see what changed.
• Site map and URL search: list all archived URLs for a domain.
• Collections: curated archives of news, government sites and events.

Why the Wayback Machine is useful

• Recover lost content: if your server crashed or you lost old posts, you may recover text and code from snapshots. We used this to restore lost Blogger template code.
• Research and evidence: journalists and researchers cite snapshots to show what a page said on a certain date.
• Fix broken links: find the archived version of a dead link you want to cite.
• SEO history: check what was on an expired domain before you buy it.
• Nostalgia: see how your favourite sites looked years ago.

Can you remove your site from the Wayback Machine?

In 2005, adding a robots.txt rule was enough to exclude your site and hide past captures. The Internet Archive later stopped automatically following robots.txt for most sites. Today, site owners who want pages excluded should contact the Internet Archive directly with proof that they own the site.

FAQ

Is the Wayback Machine free?

Yes. It is free to use and run by the non-profit Internet Archive, which relies on donations.

Why is my page not in the Wayback Machine?

Not every page is crawled, and pages behind logins, some JavaScript-heavy pages and excluded sites are not saved. Use Save Page Now to capture it.

How far back does the Wayback Machine go?

Captures start in 1996, although many sites have fewer snapshots in the early years.

Is there a Wayback Machine alternative?

archive.today also stores snapshots of pages, and some national libraries run their own web archives.