Internet Time Machine – How to Find An Old Website

Volume Nine

• Digital Marketing

Here’s a scenario that we encounter all the time…. you got really ambitious a few months ago and made some big changes to improve your website content and maybe even tried to do some good old-fashioned SEO.  That’s cool, but the problem is that you don’t remember what changes you made to the content and you really want to grab a few sentences or an image from that old website design that existed way back in the past.

OR maybe you’re putting together a presentation for the CEO to show off your new website design that launched earlier this year, and you want to show a before & after screenshot but of course, you forgot to grab a screen capture of the old website!

How Do You Find Your Old Content?

What you need is a time machine, even better an Internet Time machine, you know…. a real honest to goodness Marty McFly / Back to the Future style time machine so you can go back to past and find that old website.

Well, you’ll be glad to know that not all is lost with this effort.  I’m here to tell you that the best free tool I’ve found for internet archival searches is The Wayback Machine by Archive.com.  This tool provides users the ability to specify any URL and a range of dates to select based on what you are looking for.

The available dates where your site can be viewed are highlighted in blue for ease.  Once you select a date you can view the site as it existed during that time.  There you go, your personalized time machine ready for use!

The benefit is that all content including body copy, page title, alt tags, and header tags can be viewed and brought back to the future for you and all of you re-purposing and marketing needs. Many times, old look & feels for your website can be pulled up as well.  I will tell you the one drawback I’ve found with this tool is the frequency of it’s indexing.  It can sometimes be a little as 1 week or as much as 3 months.  All that aside, considering this is a free web archival tool makes this little drawback not that big.

Is Your Website Stuck in the Past?

If you are on the opposite side of the coin and you know your site needs some improvements, schedule an SEO Audit with Volume Nine to see where you should start! The future of your website’s success depends on it!