How to Use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine

Viewing Archived Websites

1. Go to https://web.archive.org in your web browser. You can use the Wayback Machine to see older versions of websites on any computer, phone, or tablet.

2. Enter the website you want to view. You can type the full URL into the field labeled "Enter a URL or words related to a site's homepage."

   1. If you don't know the address of the website, type its name (or some keywords that describe it) into the field instead.
   2. Entering an address like https://www.wikihow.com will yield different results than entering https://www.wikihow.com/Use-the-Internet-Archive%27s-Wayback-Machine.

3. Press ↵ Enter or ⏎ Return. This displays the results of your search in the form of a bar graph and calendar.

   1. If you searched for a name or by keyword, you'll see a list of suggested sites to peruse. Click or tap the URL and then continue to the next step.

4. Select a year on the bar graph. By default, you'll be taken to the current year on the bar graph that runs along the top of the page. There are black bars that show how many times the page was archived by the Wayback Machine during that year. Click an area above a year to see a 12-month calendar showing each date in that year.

   Note: If there are no black bars on the year you want to view, no website snapshots were taken that year.

5. Click a date on the calendar. Depending on the site you search for, you'll usually see green and/or blue circles around some of the calendar dates. If a date is circled, it means there's a snapshot of the site available from that date. Clicking the date displays the archived version of the website.

   1. If a website was archived multiple times on one day, the circle around the date will be a little larger. Hover your mouse cursor over the date to see the list of archive times, then select a time to view that version.
   2. If you see an error when you click a date or time, the site may be set up to ignore the Wayback Machine's web crawler. Errors can also mean that the website was unreachable at the time.
   3. Depending on the way the site was archived, you may be able to click links on the page to see other archived content. Unfortunately, clicking links on an archived site will usually produce an error.

6. Browse other archived versions of the site. The bar graph from the previous page runs along the top of the archived website. You can use it to check out the same site on other dates. Use the blue arrows to jump to the previous or next archived snapshot, or click a different date to view it.