How to see old versions of websites, bring dead pages back, prove what a page said and when, and track how sites change over time — with the Wayback Machine and seven more public web archives.
Updated
§ 01 Start here
Web Archive Viewer is now in the Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-ons and Microsoft Edge Add-ons. How to install it in each browser, set up the keyboard shortcuts, what each of the 14 tools does and what stays free.
7 min read · 7 October 2026
§ 02 Every article
Filter by topic, or browse the lot.
Check a site's first archived capture, its domain registration date, on-page clues and search history to work out when a website really launched, and what each date can and can't tell you.
Recover logos, product photos and blog images that have been removed or replaced, using web archive captures, archived image URLs and a few tricks for finding the original files.
Use web archives to see how a competitor's pricing, positioning, product pages and SEO have changed over the years, and turn what you find into decisions instead of trivia.
Lost your site when the hosting lapsed or the domain expired? Here's how to recover your pages, images and posts from web archives, rebuild the site and keep your old URLs working.
"We've updated our terms" rarely says what changed. Use archived versions to find the exact clauses that were added, removed or reworded, and keep a record you can cite.
Jump straight to a year, list every URL on a site, get raw pages without the toolbar, find captures that actually changed and query the archive with the CDX API. Practical Wayback Machine shortcuts.
Before you redesign, replatform or move domains, capture what you have: every URL, the content, the SEO metadata and how it looked. A checklist that protects your traffic and your history.
Annual reports, manuals, white papers and forms vanish when sites are redesigned. Here's how to find archived copies of PDFs and other documents, even when you don't know the exact link.
A domain with a past can carry spam, penalties or legal baggage. See what used to be on a domain, spot red flags in its archive history and decide whether it's worth buying.
How to use web archives to verify claims, preserve sources before they change, document edits to articles and statements, and cite archived pages so readers can check your work.
Four reliable ways to view what a website looked like in the past: the Wayback Machine calendar, other web archives, a snapshot from a specific date, and a one-click browser extension that checks eight archives at once.
Web Archive Viewer is now in the Chrome Web Store, Firefox Add-ons and Microsoft Edge Add-ons. How to install it in each browser, set up the keyboard shortcuts, what each of the 14 tools does and what stays free.
The Wayback Machine is the biggest web archive, not the only one. Here are seven more free archives — Archive.today, Arquivo.pt, Archive-It, Ghostarchive, UK Web Archive, Trove and Common Crawl — what each is best at, and how to check them all in one click.
A page you need now returns 404, or the whole site is gone. Here is a step-by-step method to find a surviving copy in the web archives, pick the best capture, and extract the text so you never lose it again.
Terms of service rewritten, a price quietly raised, a claim removed from a press release? Learn how to compare two archived versions of any page — side by side, as a text diff, by metadata and pixel by pixel — and turn the result into shareable evidence.
Save a timestamped, public copy of any page in seconds with the Wayback Machine's Save Page Now, Archive.today or Ghostarchive — and know which to use for news, social posts, paywalled and JavaScript-heavy pages.
Why did a page lose its rankings? What did a competitor change before they overtook you? Use archived captures to track title tags, meta descriptions, canonicals, H1s, word counts and links across years — and chart the trend.
A tour of Web Developer Tools, the free extension that puts 555 utilities for CSS, HTML, images, forms, cookies, headers, SEO and accessibility into one popup — and how it pairs with web archives for before-and-after debugging.
Ready-to-copy citation formats for Wayback Machine and other archived pages in APA 7, MLA 9, Chicago, BibTeX and Wikipedia's {{cite web}} — plus why every web citation should carry an archive link.
List every page, file and redirect the Wayback Machine has ever captured for a website — subdomains included. Use it to recover lost content, plan redirects after a migration, audit an expired domain or map a competitor's old site.
Old blog posts, documentation and reference lists quietly fill with broken links. Here's how to check up to 1,000 URLs at once for live status and archive availability, and replace dead links with archived copies.
A fast, repeatable website audit you can run on any page before launch or for a client: headings, images, forms, links, headers, cookies and responsive layout with Web Developer Tools — plus a history check with web archives.
Never lose a window of research again. The built-in ways to save and reopen tabs in Chrome, Edge and Firefox, where they fall short, and how a session manager adds named sessions, automatic backups and cross-device sync.
A five-step system for people who live with dozens of open tabs: triage, save by project, put idle tabs to sleep, group and dedupe — so your browser stays fast and you never lose the page you needed.
You open dozens of new tabs a day. CentPage turns each one into a homepage with your favourite sites, multi-engine search and 50 widgets — weather, to-dos, notes, Pomodoro, currency converter and more — for Chrome and Firefox.
A practical guide to turning your browser's new tab page into a calm focus dashboard: a Pomodoro timer, a three-item to-do list, quick notes and nothing that pulls you into a feed — set up with CentPage in ten minutes.
Web Archive Viewer · free
Every guide here takes one click with the extension.
Open the page you're on across the Wayback Machine, Archive.today, Arquivo.pt, Archive-It, Ghostarchive, UK Web Archive, Trove and Common Crawl. Free forever, no account, no tracking — on Chrome, Firefox and Edge.
§ 03 From our studio
Built by Ritwick Halder. The same rules apply: small permissions, fast popups, no ads.
555 developer tools to inspect, debug, test and audit any page.
Save, restore, back up and sync your tabs and windows.
A productivity new tab: bookmarks, search, notes and 50 widgets.
