How to See What a Deleted Website Looked Like

Open the Wayback Machine

Go to web.archive.org and paste the address. You get a timeline of years and a calendar. Days with a coloured dot have at least one saved copy; click a day, then pick a time.

Read the calendar colours

The dot colour shows how the site answered when it was saved.

• Blue: the page loaded normally (status 200).
• Green: it redirected somewhere else (3xx).
• Orange: a client error such as “not found” (4xx).
• Red: a server error (5xx).

Choose a blue capture

Pick a blue capture, and start with the newest one. The newest copy that shows real content is what we use for the preview on each report. We skip error pages, “not found” pages, parked pages and nearly empty pages.

Why a copy can look broken

The archive saves what the server sent, not the server itself. Images, fonts and scripts may be missing, content embedded from other sites is often absent, and pages that build themselves with JavaScript can look empty. Our preview runs without scripts, so some pages look simpler than they did.

Find the other pages

To list every archived page of a site, open web.archive.org/web/*/ followed by the address and a trailing /*. Each report on this site lists a few of the pages the archive holds.

Two useful tricks

Adding id_ right after the timestamp in an archive address shows the original file without the archive toolbar. Adding if_ shows the page for embedding in a frame, which is how our preview loads it.

If nothing was saved

Not every site was archived. Try other captures or other pages, and search for the site’s name to find mentions elsewhere. Google no longer offers cached page links, so the Internet Archive is the main free option.

Respect the owner

The archived content still belongs to whoever made it. Looking is fine. Copying it into a new site, or pretending to be the previous owner, is not.

More guides

• How to Check If a Website Is Really Gone
• Do Backlinks to a Deleted Website Still Help?