The Best WayBack Machine Alternative
The wayback machine at archive.org has recently made changes and as a result it had me and my team scrambling to find an alternative.
Archive.org has been a key part of my processes for a few years! It along with MajestiSEO.com is(was) the best source to review a site to see if it had been abused.
The WayBack machine now only shows the history for live sites. Meaning if a domain is expired it will simply give an error. My hope is this is a bug with the new site and it will be fixed shortly but for those of us that are finding clean expired domains an alternative is needed!
The reality is that there is no really suitable alternative for Archive.org and the waybackmachine! If you are having issues with using the site check to make sure it is working for others using this tool and maybe wait a few minutes or try a different browser. Although the problems I have often run into haven’t been limited to the site being down but simply the screenshots not working.
Hope these alternatives are helpful!
Archive.is
Archive.is or Archive.org is the best free alternative but its quality is not very good compared to Archive.org!
Archive.is provides a more visual representation of the site and you are also able to set your site to record screenshots of it at a given time.
It can be used over Archive.org for the purposes of seeing the design of an older site.
Pros
- Free alternative
- Shows a better visual representation than archive.org
Cons
- Not Free
- Site is only an image and can’t not see destination of links
- Does not show the functioning website (no code)
- Sometimes the image is too low of resolution to read text/anchor text
- Does not have as good of historical coverage as archive.org
ScreenShots.com is the best alternative but has been included inside the paid DomainTools.com offering
There are many alternatives however most of them focus on providing a service of monitoring pages you select moving forward (such as Stillio.com).
We need something that will show how a site looked historically and ScreenShots.com will do this.
Pros
- It shows exactly how the site looked including images
- Has very good historical coverage compared to any other alternative
- Shows additional DomainTools information in a handy reference window
Cons
- Not Free
- Site is only an image and can’t not see destination of links
- Sometimes the image is too low of resolution to read text/anchor text
- Does not have as good of historical coverage as archive.org
At least we know its a bug with Archive.org and will be fixed http://archive.org/post/1035328/what-happened-cant-view-my-archived-websites-anymore
Hi Doug, thanks for pointing out that thread. Glad they have it all fixed now.
Ive spent the best part of 24 hours fretting over this, and just when I was about to give in and switch tactics, I thought I would see if there was anything about it here, and hey presto. Jon on the ball as per usual, thanks pal. I can relax a little now!
haha…glad I was able to help John!
Thanks so much for posting this! I hope they sort it out quickly. I’m in the evil business of ‘restoring’ expired domains including the text content. Using the old content has served me well and I was surprised to see nothing but ‘robots.txt’ errors on Wayback today.
Hi GDB…I strongly discourage reusing old content as it opens up a whole ethical and legal question I don’t understand.
I feel people make a bigger deal out of this in theory than it is in practice. These sites and domains have been long abandoned and forgotten 99,9% of the time. And more often than not they’re old domains for small businesses that have gone out of business and only contained a few pages.
I leave out any irrelevant information like old contact details and forms and point visitors to ‘real’ websites that provide current information in the case of an animal rescue PBN I have.
At the end of the day the old owners don’t suffer. visitors actually end up on a working website with useful information and I profit by slipping a few links in there on the homepage.
Should anyone contact me with a complaint about using their old content, I’ll simply take it down. No problem. No questions asked. No discussion.
But it simply hasn’t happened yet. I’ve had more trouble with people (wrongly) complaining about 100% unique and personally written content on my real sites just because I outrank them than I’ve had issues with people contacting me about my PBN content.
I also only operate a handful of PBN domains and not thousands like you and other well known PBNers do. So maybe that also plays a role.
At the end of the day everyone needs to decide for themselves what they’re comfortable with. But doing it this way has served me well over the past 1,5 years. And at the end of the day the worst that will happen in practice is an email in your inbox asking you to remove the content.
Hi Jon, Wayback Machine is working properly again 😉
Thanks for letting us know…glad they got it fixed.
At least in the future I know where to send my team if Archive goes down.
Jon thanks for the archive.today link, I’ll have a look at that.
I wanted to comment on screenshots.com though. Apart from the cons that you already mention I must add that as it just shows screenshots you have no way of knowing if you are seeing content on the domain or content as the result of a redirect. This can make a big difference in the value of a domain IMO.
I wasn’t aware of the redirect issue…thanks for letting us know.
Hey Jon,
I’ve been struggling with this all weekend, I though there was something wrong with my browser! LOL! I started looking for alternatives but couldn’t come up with anything useful, until I got your email. It’s good to know there are viable options since it’s always a danger to rely on only one source for information.
Thanks so much Jon for keeping us in the loop and always providing such awesome content!
Gabi
Hi Gabi…glad I was able to help!
This scared me too for some time Jon, I love the old archive.org look and feel and I use it alot in my business of find old websites. I think using a combination of site shots with archive.org is best if you actually want to get a look on how a site looks to the user.
waybackmachine has from the 1990’s
What other site has this??
John, I don’t think these are “bugs”. The Waybackmachine and Internaet Archive have sold out to improve revenue streams. Their interface has been purposely crippled and dumbed-down, while providing lots of useless information and opportunities to divulge private information or join a subscription service. The WayBackMachine was a real eye sore for Elsevier and other copyright holders who have placed old works previously in the public domain back into copyright. Since Elsevier has made so much money by stealing our cultural heritage and science and placing it behind paywalls, the supposed non-profit IA is now following suit and being influenced by these people who have corrupted the organization. Although IA is non-profit, I have no doubt it is “expanding” and salaries and endowments are going up. A corrupt non-profit is no different than a corrupt profit.
Hi Jon
I came here as archive.org is down right now and I was in need of checking an old site (nothing to do with PBNS in this instance). Hopefully they’ll fix it soon, as while screenshots.com is handy, not being able to check links and navigate means it is of limited value.
Also, for info, you have a space after the link to this site http://archive.today which results in an error for anybody clicking it.
Cheers!
Simon
Jon, thanks for the great guide!
One thing though, you may want to edit/remove screenshots.com from the article, since the service is not free anymore for some time now i.e it’s a paid service currently (if it actually still exists, I haven’t looked deeper into it), thus not really available to the wide public.
Regards,
Jenny.
Thanks Jenny, appreciate that and have now updated the post to do a deeper dive into archive.is