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In short: The Wayback Machine (web.archive.org) is a free, public archive of the internet run by the Internet Archive organization since 1996. It lets you see what any website looked like on a specific day in the past — and thus detect deleted paragraphs, changed campaign promises, removed posts, or “scrubbed” company histories. Below are 10 concrete tricks for using it, with examples from real journalistic investigations.
How the Wayback Machine works
Since 1996, the Internet Archive has been automatically “scanning” the internet and saving copies of pages in its archive — today that’s already more than several hundred billion archived URLs. Each archived version of a page has its own address in the format web.archive.org/web/TIMESTAMP/PAGE_ADDRESS, where the timestamp is the date and time in the YYYYMMDDhhmmss format. So if you want to see example.com exactly as it was on January 1, 2020, all you need to type is web.archive.org/web/20200101000000/example.com — the Wayback Machine will show the closest available copy from that period.
The Internet Archive has been archiving websites since 1996 and stores hundreds of billions of archived addresses — for free and without registration.
A regular visit to the website
You see only the current version. If someone deleted, changed, or “scrubbed” something yesterday, you’ll never find out.
A visit through the Wayback Machine
You choose a specific date from the calendar and see the page exactly as it was then — including content that later disappeared.
10 examples and tricks for using the Wayback Machine
Type the address directly with the date in the link
The format web.archive.org/web/20200101000000/adresstrony.pl immediately shows the closest copy from the chosen date — no need to click through the calendar. Replace the timestamp with an asterisk (web.archive.org/web/*/adresstrony.pl) to see a list of all available snapshots of a given address.
Read the colored dots in the calendar
After you enter an address on the web.archive.org home page, you get a calendar with colored dots next to each snapshot date: blue means a successful copy (code 2xx), green — a redirect, orange and red — errors. To browse content, choose blue dots first and foremost.
Compare two versions of a page with the Compare tool
At archive.org/web/docucomp.php, you can select two snapshots of the same address from different dates, and the tool will automatically highlight the differences in the text. It’s much faster than manually comparing two open tabs.
Archive a page yourself before someone changes it
The “Save Page Now” feature at archive.org/web lets you save the current version of any page in a few seconds. It’s worth using when you see something that might be deleted — e.g., a controversial post or a promise on a campaign website — before it disappears for good.
Look for deleted content from politicians and companies
This is one of the most common ways the archive is used in journalism. CNN and Politico have repeatedly used archived posts to show that politicians deleted earlier critical comments about their current allies. Similarly, the WSJ and Forbes documented statements about forced labor or product safety that had been removed from company websites.
Check whether content has been “softened” or “sharpened”
Imprint News showed that the language on immigration policy on official websites was “sharpened” just before new regulations were announced. The Guardian, in turn, revealed that a blog post warning about a virus had passages added only AFTER the pandemic began — even though it suggested an earlier date.
Use the API (CDX) if you need a full list of snapshots
For more advanced users: the Wayback CDX Server API lets you programmatically download a full list of all snapshots of a given address, along with dates and response codes — useful when you’re checking the history of many addresses at once rather than a single page.
Prove that something did NOT change
The archive also works the other way — it confirms the absence of changes. AFP Fact Check used archived versions of a political party’s website to debunk the claim that its platform had been quietly changed. The Daily Beast similarly used the archive to show that a social media account had never been suspended — contrary to claims about its “reactivation.”
Remember the limitations — not everything is archived
Pages blocked in the robots.txt file, content that requires logging in, elements generated dynamically by JavaScript, and pages the crawler hasn’t visited yet may be unavailable or display with missing images or styles. There is also usually a gap of 3 to 10 hours between saving a page and its appearance in the archive.
Turn to archive.today when you need an instant snapshot
The Wayback Machine is a systematic archive built since 1996, but when you need to take a lightning-fast, single snapshot of a page (e.g., to get around a paywall or freeze something that’s about to disappear), an alternative is archive.today (archive.ph) — it works on demand and is usually faster than Save Page Now, although it doesn’t have as long, continuous a history as the Internet Archive.
“The internet doesn’t forget — but you need to know where to look to remind it of what someone would rather hide.”
What the Wayback Machine won’t show
The Wayback Machine is a powerful tool, but it isn’t all-knowing. It won’t archive a page the crawler has never visited — if no one previously asked for it to be saved, it simply won’t be there. Content behind a login, paid subscriptions, or generated dynamically by JavaScript is sometimes archived incompletely or not at all. It’s also worth remembering that website owners themselves can ask for their address to be excluded from the archive, which sometimes explains “gaps” in the history exactly where we’d most like to look.
Frequently asked questions
No. The pages that are archived are those visited by the Internet Archive’s automatic crawler, or those someone saved manually using the Save Page Now feature. Pages that have never been visited simply have no snapshots.
Yes — that’s what the “Save Page Now” feature at archive.org/web is for. It saves the current version of the specified page in a few seconds.
It is sometimes accepted in certain proceedings, but this usually requires additional certification (e.g., a statement/affidavit) and depends on the jurisdiction and the specific case. This is not legal advice — if in doubt, it’s worth consulting a lawyer.
The Wayback Machine is a systematic, continuous archive of the internet run by the Internet Archive since 1996. Archive.today takes single snapshots on demand, usually faster, but without as long, continuous a history of individual pages.
The most common reasons are: the page was never visited by the crawler, the owner asked for it to be excluded from the archive, the content is generated dynamically by JavaScript, or access requires logging in.
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Sources: Internet Archive Help Center, “Using the Wayback Machine” (help.archive.org); Internet Archive Blog, “Follow the Changes: 9 Ways Web Archives are Used in Digital Investigations” (blog.archive.org); the Compare tool (archive.org/web/docucomp.php); Wayback CDX Server API (Internet Archive); archive.today (archive.ph).