How to Use the Wayback Machine and Web Archives

To use the Wayback Machine, type a page's full address at web.archive.org and open one of the saved copies on its calendar; to keep a live page, save it with Save Page Now or archive.today. Our fact-checks cite archived copies: in our Debunker on organ-trafficking claims, the paragraph on RT's May 2023 documentary 'Tanks for Kidneys' cites a Wayback Machine copy of the RT page, not the live page.

What is a web archive, and what is the Wayback Machine?

A web archive stores copies of web pages, each saved at a known moment. The International Internet Preservation Consortium defines web archiving as "the process of collecting portions of the World Wide Web, preserving the collections in an archival format, and then serving the archives for access and use".

The Internet Archive describes the Wayback Machine as "a service that allows people to visit archived versions of Web sites". Its help centre says it "has been archiving the web since 1996, helping preserve the historical record of the internet". It collects pages with automated crawlers, and only public ones: "We do not archive pages that require a password to access, pages that are only accessible when a person types into and sends a form".

archive.today works differently: it does not crawl the web on its own. According to its FAQ, it "saves only one page acting as a direct agent of the human user". Its home page says "It saves a text and a graphical copy of the page for better accuracy". Our list of free OSINT tools includes other archiving tools.

How do you find an old version of a page in the Wayback Machine?

Type the page's address at web.archive.org; a search term will not work. The Internet Archive's page on using the Wayback Machine explains that you can "search for the names of sites contained in the Archive (URLs) and to specify date ranges for your search", but not the words inside pages: "We hope to implement a full text search engine at some point in the future."

The captures of a page appear on a calendar page as coloured dots, and the colour shows what the crawler received: "Blue means the web server result code the crawler got for the related capture was a 2nn (good); Green means the crawlers got a status code 3nn (redirect)", while orange and red mark errors. Its advice: "Most of the time you will probably want to select the blue dots or links."

Every capture has its own address, and the same help page asks readers to "Pay attention to the date code embedded in the archived url". As it explains, "This is the list of numbers in the middle; it translates as yyyymmddhhmmss." Replace that code with an asterisk and the archive lists every capture of the page.

We tried a shortcut on our methodology page on 1 November 2026: web.archive.org/web/2023/ followed by the page address took us to a capture made in December of that year.

The pages you click through inside an archived site may come from different dates. The help page warns that "When you are surfing an incomplete archived site the Wayback Machine will grab the closest available date to the one you are in for the links that are missing", and that a link never archived may be loaded from the live web. Check the date code of every page you rely on.

How do you save a page before it disappears?

Save it with Save Page Now or archive.today as soon as you find it. The Internet Archive's help page says: "On web.archive.org you can use the “Save Page Now” feature to save a specific page one time." It describes how it works: "Put a URL into the form, press the button, and we save the page." It adds: "Please note, this method only saves a single page, not the whole site."

In archive.today, paste the address into the box for live pages on its home page. The EEAS OSINT guidelines note that with these tools "having the original URL is enough to create an archived version of the desired webpage", and that they "will suggest the already archived version for a certain webpage if it already exists in the library".

The two services handle your connection differently, which matters when you research a site's owners. The Internet Archive says of Save Page Now: "We do not keep your IP address, so your submission is anonymous." archive.today's FAQ warns that when you archive a page, your IP address is sent to the website you archive, as if you were using a proxy.

In our test, Save Page Now on our methodology page returned the address of a new capture straight away. Its date code showed the time one hour behind the Brussels clock, which suggests UTC, so note your own time zone when you log a capture.

Looking up our home page with archive.ph/newest/ followed by the address redirected to the address of a saved copy; we could not open it because archive.today showed a CAPTCHA. archive.today may ask you to solve a CAPTCHA.

Preservation is one of the six phases in the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations, published by the UN Human Rights Office and the Human Rights Center at UC Berkeley.

The Pew Research Center has measured how often pages disappear. Its study, published in 2024, found that "A quarter of all webpages that existed at one point between 2013 and 2023 are no longer accessible, as of October 2023", and that "Some 38% of webpages that existed in 2013 are not available today" ('today' meaning October 2023, when Pew checked the pages).

How do archives help verify a claim or trace a website?

Archives show what a page said at a given time, so a claim can be checked against the record, not against the page as it reads today. The EEAS guidelines point out that the Wayback Machine's calendar of captures "helps track changes in frequently edited content, such as platform policies against misinformation".

Old captures can keep a site's past analytics codes, and Bellingcat notes that sites sharing such a code are likely managed by the same people; this is one of the ways to trace who runs a website. To find the pages worth saving in the first place, use search operators.

A worked example: archived sources in our Debunker articles

In our Debunker on organ-trafficking claims, published in December 2023, the reference for the paragraph on RT's documentary is a Wayback Machine copy: web.archive.org/web/20230524181848/ followed by the address of the RT page.

Read with the help page's key, the date code 20230524181848 means the copy was made on 24 May 2023. The copy stays online even if the original page changes or is removed, unless it is later excluded. When we checked it for this guide, the copy still opened.

Our Debunker on the claim that Ukraine is causing the food crisis cites a copy whose address holds two dates: the date code 20230523071452, meaning it was captured on 23 May 2023, and the original ria.ru address, which carries 20220523. A capture date tells you when the archive saw a page, not when the page was written.

How to check a page's history yourself

Practise on a public page with no personal information, such as our methodology page or a government press page.

1. Pick the page and copy its full address, not the site's home page.

2. Type the address at web.archive.org. Note the earliest and latest captures (or replace the date code with * to list them).

3. Open two captures at least a year apart. Compare the text and note each date code.

4. Save the page as it is now with Save Page Now. Copy the new archive address it gives you.

5. Save the same page in archive.today and compare the two copies.

6. Log each copy: the archive address, the original address and the time you saved it.

Archiving is one step in a longer open source investigation: analysts save, verify and then interpret what they find. Our FIMI 101 course, a 10-hour, self-paced online course, covers the skills and tools to recognise, analyse and counter AI-driven disinformation and FIMI campaigns.

What can't web archives capture?

Archives keep only what their tools could reach. The Internet Archive gives the reasons a page may be missing: "Some sites may not be included because the automated crawlers were unaware of their existence at the time of the crawl." Others were "password protected, blocked by robots.txt, or otherwise inaccessible", and "Site owners might have also requested that their sites be excluded from the Wayback Machine."

The Internet Archive explains why interactive pages stop working: "When a dynamic page contains forms, JavaScript, or other elements that require interaction with the originating host, the archive will not contain the original site’s functionality." Images may be missing too: "Broken images occur when the images are not available on our servers."

Social media posts are often harder to archive. The EEAS guidelines warn that "The archiving tools described above may not always be effective, making downloading and storing the media offline necessary, detaching it from the post’s original context", and that "there is no one-tool-fits-all for content".

News sites are not always covered either. The Internet Archive's help centre reports that "some publishers and news organizations have begun blocking the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine from preserving and providing access to archived versions of their websites". So a missing capture of a news article does not prove the article never existed.

A capture shows only that a page existed at a moment in time. archive.today's FAQ puts it plainly: "It merely certifies that at the given point of time there was a page on the web." The Internet Archive adds that its collections "may include pages with personal information", so treat archived pages about private people with the same care as live ones.

Can an archived page be used as evidence?

It can support evidence, but the Internet Archive says that "the Wayback Machine tool was not expressly designed with legal use in mind", although "we receive regular requests for certified records for use in legal proceedings". Whether an archived page is accepted in a given case is a question for a lawyer in that country.

Keep the archived copy together with a screenshot and the page source, so that each record can be checked against the others.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Wayback Machine free?

Yes. The Internet Archive says it "makes the collections available at no cost to researchers, historians, and scholars".

Can a site owner remove pages from the archive?

An owner can ask the Internet Archive to exclude a site, but the archive says: "We do not make any guarantees beforehand about the outcome of a request."

How long does it take for a page to appear in the Wayback Machine?

For pages found by its crawlers, the Internet Archive says "There is a 3-10 hour lag time between the time a site is crawled and when it appears in the Wayback Machine."

Get our new analysis by email

We'll tell you when we publish a new article, with a short summary, and invite you to upcoming Debunk.org events.

Subscribe