Searching the Web's Past

One problem in searching the web is that it’s constantly changing, and something that may have appeared on a page might not longer be there. For example, a company might have posted something that was incriminating in some way, shape, or form, and then, realizing this, taken it down.

In such a case, it’s time to call Mr. Peabody and hit the Wayback Machine. It’s a reference to the old cartoon episodes when a genius dog and his boy, Sherman (no relation), would travel into historic periods for amusement. And on the Internet, there is The Wayback Machine Internet Archive.

You provide the URL and this site goes through 85 billion pages archived since 1996 and shows you up-dates for each year. It doesn’t capture every change on the web; for example, I used it on my own site and found no changes in 2007 and only one in 2006, though I’ve made incremental changes in my home page. But, I did find older versions. It’s worth a check. Also, there is archived video, audio, text, and even legally down-loadable computer pro-grams and you can search through these as well.

If you only need to go back a few months, there are other options. Google.com, Live.com, Yahoo.com, Ask.com, and Gigablast.com all keep cached searches going back anywhere from three months to a year, depending on the search engine.