How to Find Old Websites That No Longer Exist

In today’s age, the internet is growing rapidly. Websites receive countless revamped versions and new additions. Sometimes, these websites are shut down due to a company closing and other similar reasons. There exist several historical records that enable you to see all old versions of websites and their revamped versions. Sometimes, you might find that a particular website no longer available message. This can mean it is taken down but here in this article, you will learn how to find old websites that no longer exist. So, let’s get started.

How to Find Old Websites That No Longer Exist

We have explained about the ways to find old sites that no longer exist in detail.

Why Would I Want an Old Version of Website?

You might ask yourself the question about why you want to look out for an old website. For a website to evolve, over time its overall design, data, and pages are constantly being updated. These multiple iterations of a website help improve the website one step better than the last version.

• If you have a certain website that is your favorite and has been taken down due to censorship or other reasons. You can gain access to the website by looking into an archive.
• If you are curious to find out more about the early designs of a website, searching an archive will be helpful.
• If certain data valuable to you is lost due to regular updates, you can go back to the older versions of the website to view the old data again.
• If you are a blogger or a scientist working on an article, you might want to include references to your article. If an article is expired you can always use a cached version of these links so that your readers can trace the source of the information.
• If you research SEO, you can use these archive tools to remove incorrect links and adjust webpage changes.
• Sometimes, if you need evidence of abuse or threats made on the internet and want to report it to the higher authority. You can use the old version of a site since the live version of the website’s comments may be deleted.

For all these reasons you might question how to find old websites that no longer exist. You can make use of Internet archives that enable you to take a peek into the old versions of a site and also observe how it has evolved.

Method 1: Through Google Search

You can also use the Google search engine to search for old sites. This will serve well as a tutorial on how to find old websites that no longer exist and also how to look up old sites on google. You can also perform a slight modification of the webpage URL to load an old site.

1. If you are searching for old articles or pages, you can enter the keyword site: followed by the URL of the webpage.

2. Now, perform a search with this on Google for example site:techcult.com.

Note: The above given example is only for illustration purposes.

3. Click on Tools present at the top, and a drop-down menu will appear. Then, click Any time drop-down menu to see all the time range you want the archives to be sorted out.

4. If you want to enter custom time, click on the Anytime drop-down and then click on Custom range.

5. A new window will be displayed. You can enter the date on From and To boxes with the date range you want the site to be searched.

6. Finally, click on Go present below the To box to search according to the time range you entered.

Note: It is to be noted that some websites don’t get archived due to some issues and searching for their old articles of a website will redirect you to their current website.

The above-mentioned method allows you to learn how to look up old websites on Google.

Also Read: 14 Best Desktop Search Engines For Windows 10

Method 2: Search using Bing

You can also try the Bing search engine if your Google search did not yield any appropriate results for you. Follow the steps below to try this method.

1. Search for a site on the Bing search engine by entering the site and hitting Enter key.

Note: For reference, techcult.com is used.

2. After the search, you can categorize the search results according to date. Click on Date drop-down menu.

3. Now, you can select the time frame from which the articles are published on that website.

4. If you want to enter a custom date, you can edit the Custom range box present. The first box represents the starting date range and the second box represents the end date range.

5. Finally, click Apply to search for the date range you have entered.

Also Read: How to Find Someone’s Exact Location with IP Address

Method 3: Search Through Google Cached Pages

Google sometimes stores a cached version of a site. This version is the recent version of the site that is cached so it is not a live version but it is cached from the previous point in time, and you can access it. If you are looking to learn how to find old websites that no longer exist through search engines, this method will help you.

1. Search for a website in the Google search bar and hit Enter key.

Note: For reference, techcult is used.

2. Click on the three dots present.

3. A particular window will pop up. Then, click Cached if it is available.

4. These cached websites give info that was either deleted or edited before. These caches are created by search engines so you might get different cache options on different search engines.

5. If you use Google Chrome and you know the URL of a website and want to obtain a cached version page of it. You can enter the keyword cache: before the URL, for example, cache:techcult.com. This will display the cached version of the website directly.

Note: The above given example is only for illustration purposes.

Also Read: 31 Best Web Scraping Tools

Method 4: Using External Websites

Many services offer to view old versions of a website, this is possible as these services store all the copies of websites. On request, these services take a snapshot of a specific page which means that you can find thousands of revamped versions of your website. We will be discussing these services. People who search for how to find old websites that no longer exist might find this method helpful.

1. Internet Archive Wayback

The Internet Archive is an organization that allows searching for archives. This is possible since it archives a digital library of websites, books, recordings of audio, images, etc. Even there are old emulated versions of games that you can play right from the browser. Internet Archive stores over 448 billion pages. The website allows users to search its archive through its tool called Wayback Machine.

1. Go to the Wayback Machine tool official site.

2. To check all the archives of a particular site, enter the URL of a site.

3. Click on BROWSE HISTORY to search.

4. Wayback Machine will mention how many copies are saved over the last years and there is a graph depicting this data.

5. You can also access these data by sorting through the year. Click on a year on the graph to sort out by year.

6. There will be months present on the page of the year you selected.

7. You can click on a date and all the snapshots for the particular date will be provided.

8. When you click on a snapshot that you would like to view, the snapshot will be opened on the same tab.

Note: Only the dates which is highlighted as a circle has a snapshot on it and only those can be viewed.

9. The search may take a bit of time since Wayback Machine searches through massive libraries.

Note: Sometimes, you might not get the info you want, or there might not be any cached copies saved for a website and may face website no longer available message. The reason for this can be due to the webpage not being cached, this is common for all websites that have massive libraries of content on their websites.

10. Below given is the Myspace website from 1997.

Also Read: How to Find Someone’s IP Address by Phone Number

2. oldweb.today

oldweb.today is a service that provides you with the data of any old website while also emulating old browsers to give you a complete old browsing experience. Using oldweb.today will allow you to use the oldest versions of Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. There are more than enough archives present on this website including the Internet Archive and all other national archives. This site is best for viewing one website at a time since individuals using this website need to wait a couple of minutes before using it again.

1. Visit the oldweb.today website.

2. Select a browser from the BROWSER/EMULATOR drop-down.

3. Enter the URL or the name of the website on URL: box to begin searching for that website.

4. Enter the time from which you want to search for in the BROWSE ARCHIVES AT: box.

Note: The left part of the number indicates the date and the right part of the number indicates the time.

5. Now, the website will automatically search based on your input. This may take time since the service is emulating an old browser feel and also scrounging through many archives present in its database.

Note: Since the search is done by many people worldwide, sometimes you will be put in a waiting zone so you may need to wait before searching. After waiting, you can search for the URL and the website will bring up the website you are choosing including the emulated old browser.

3. Library of Congress

The American Library of Congress is one of the largest archives that consist of books, recordings, and all versions of a website all over the world. You can search all the websites from this archive using the search function. For every site you search, there will be descriptions and other useful information about every site in the archive. The archive system is set up so that you can even search for websites without using a search function, this is possible through the category system employed by the archive. The American congress archive also houses a massive library of old images which you can use for free. Use this tool to find old websites that no longer exist.

1. Navigate to Library of Congress website.

2. Enter the Everything drop-down box and select Web Pages.

3. Enter the URL of the website you need to search and click on the magnifying icon to search.

4. You can sort your options such as View, and Sort by time, date, and location are also present.

5. When you open a particular website page, the archive lets you access each page which is sorted by time, this is similar to Wayback Machine.

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4. Archive.today

Archive.today is a simple archive website that consist of large library of websites that are archived over the years. To view the old version of a website you can search using a URL on the search. It also has a chrome extension that can be integrated into the Google Chrome browser for searching anytime.

1. Visit the Archive.today official website.

2. Now scroll down until you see a search engine that says, I want to search the archive for saved snapshots.

3. Enter the URL in the query box and click on search.

4. After the search the archive website displays all the possible snapshots of the site in reverse chronological order.

5. Click on an article to view it.

6. Click download.zip to download the webpage in Zip format.

Note: One of the features in the archive website is to download a webpage as a ZIP file and view it later or share the file.

7. It is not as massive as Wayback Machine but its library of archived sites helps you to uncover most sites.

5. UK Web Archive

UK Web Archive has a massive collection of sites. The main aim of the site is to save all the United Kingdom sites on their archives, so you can access all the UK websites on it. The highlighting feature of this archived site is that you can search by phrase, keyword, and also URL. United Kingdom Web archive has a category called Topics and Themes page which showcases all archives based on interests. You can use this site to save any website also. The negative point of the UK Web Archive is that it requires a library pass obtained from a specific UK library to view some sites. You can also use this tool to find old websites that no longer exist. 

1. Go to UK Web Archive website.

2. Enter a website URL in the search bar and click on Search.

3. Your results will be displayed. Now, click on the link provided to access the website.

6. Web cache viewer

Web cache viewer is an extension that you can use on your browser to search for old websites. It only grabs info from internet archives and Google cache and has no record of its own so this tool works faster than other options mentioned here.

1. Visit the Web Cache Viewer extension page to add the extension to your Chrome browser.

Note: In the example given above, brave browser is used since it is a Google Chrome-based browser.

2. Go to the site with which the old version you want to view.

3. Right-click on the page and click on Web cache viewer.

4. There are two options to choose from namely Wayback Machine Archive and Google Cache Archive.

5. Click on any option to open their version of the site.

6. Web cache viewer will open a new tab to view all of the cached copies of the website instantly.

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7. Memento Time Travel

This archived website allows you to search for archives of websites. After you enter the URL you want a cached copy of, it searches through a dozen of other internet archive websites. One of the features of this service is that you also have the option to embed the webpage in HTML format. Memento time travel also has a chrome extension. You can use this website to Find Old Websites That No Longer Exist.

1. Visit the Memento time travel official website.

2. Enter the URL of the website, and the date in the box present. You can also enter Time in the box provided near the Date box.

3. Click Find to start the search using the given details.

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We hope the above article on How to find old websites that no longer exist was helpful to you and you were able to locate old sites with ease. Please let us know which one of the methods worked best for you. If you have any queries/suggestions about this article, feel free to drop them in the comment section below, Thanks.