Have you ever wondered how to see old versions of websites? What does your Facebook page look like in 2005? What does your favorite website look like in 2010?
If you have considered these questions, you might have searched for ways to view older website versions and landed on this article.
So, keep reading to find the correct tool and way to view an old website. Once you finish reading this, you’ll easily be able to view an older version of a site.
Why Do You Want to See Old Versions of Websites?
Many reasons may motivate you to look at old versions of your preferred websites. While we don’t know your exact reasons, we’ll discuss key causes that make people view older versions of websites:
Historical Research: Some people see older versions of a website to study the development of that company.
Design Inspiration: Some designers need to look at old versions of a website to analyze past design choices and propose new design ideas.
Content Retrieval: Some webmasters need to utilize content already removed from the current website version.
Personal Nostalgia: Sometimes, you may get the urge to look back at how your favorite website used to appear.
Academic study: You need to see the old version of a website for academic study purposes.
Hence, many reasons can prompt you to see old versions of websites.
Can You Visit an Older Version of a Website?
Indeed, you can easily access an older version of your chosen website. You just need to utilize one of the best tools to view older versions of any website, and you are good to go.
But which tool to use 🤔? And how to use that tool 😕?
That’s what you’ll know once you reach the end of this article. So, keep reading it.
Top 8 Tools to Use to See Old Versions of Websites
You can find many tools online that store or cache old versions of websites. However, all these tools may not provide you with the desired results.
That’s why it’s essential to utilize the correct tools. That said, below is a list of the best tools to view old versions of a site. Start exploring them all.
1. Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine
The Internet Archive is a non-profit digital library. It offers free public access to digitized materials, such as websites, books, live recordings, videos, images, software, Balinese Palm Leaf manuscripts, and more.
On the contrary, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine stores over 916 billion web pages so that users can utilize it to see how their websites have changed over time.
Let’s now discuss how to use it. It’s simple. First, visit the website. Then, type in the website URL you want to see, and hit the Enter key.
Wait a few seconds. Wayback Machine will show you a graph and a calendar tracking old versions of website copies saved over the years. Once you click a particular year within that graph, you will see a calendar of that year highlighting snapshot dates.
Hover the mouse pointer over a highlighted date on that calendar, and you’ll see a pop-out containing the snapshot storing time. Click on it, and the Wayback Machine will load the old version of a site stored at that time.
Amazing, right? It’s like you are traveling through time. Let’s now check how our website, Radiustheme, looked like in 2018.
2. Oldweb.today
Oldweb.today is an amazing service website that allows you to see and browse old versions of websites. This platform pulls data from the Internet Archive. But what sets it apart from the Internet Archive is how it shows old versions of a website.
If you have never been able to use the ancient versions of Firefox, Opera, Internet Explorer, and NCSA Mosaic, visit this website, insert your desired URL, select the browser, and choose a date and time.
Wait a while, and this platform will launch an emulated version of your chosen browser.
As you can see in the screenshot above, we searched for the old version of Yelp, a local business directory website. With this tool, we were able to see how Yelp looked in 2000.
3. Library of Congress
The Library of Congress boasts the largest collection of blogs, newspapers, recordings, books, and websites. Similar to the previous two mentions, this one also helps you view the old versions of your preferred websites.
Nonetheless, it works slightly differently in terms of displaying old versions of a website compared to those two previous mentions.
When you search for your desired website on this platform, you will get a collection of unorganized results. Check out what we found when we look up “Facebook,” for instance:
When you click on any link, this platform will launch a calendar (mainly take you to the Internet Archive calendar) and let you browse the diverse old versions of that page.
This platform also stores descriptions and other valuable information for every website in its archive. Besides this, it has a powerful category system and a filtering option. As a result, you can effortlessly find old versions of a site.
Anyway, let’s look at how Yahoo used to appear back in 2002 in the screenshot below. To figure out that, we used this tool.
4. Search Engines Cached Pages
You can view old versions of a website using Google. Here’s how. Visit Google and type the domain name of your choice. Then, head to Tools > Any Time > Custom Range.
You’ll then see a pop-up. Input a specific time in that pop-up’s ‘From’ and ‘To’ fields and hit the ‘Go’ button to search old versions of your preferred website.
You’ll now see all the cached pages of that specified time of your chosen site on the Google search page.
If you want to find older cached versions of a website on other search engines like Bing or Yahoo, follow the same steps to view older versions of a website on Bing. However, you can’t view cached pages of a website on Yahoo.
5. Web Cache Viewer
Web Cache Viewer is a Google Chrome extension that helps you effortlessly see older website versions. To use it, go to the Chrome Web Store and search for Web Cache Viewer. Then, add this extension to your Chrome browser.
Afterward, visit a website whose older version you want to see, right-click on the screen, select Web Cache Viewer, and finally, choose either the WayBack Machine Version or Google Cache Archive.
This extension will open a new window displaying a cached page based on the web cache viewer you choose.
6. Stanford Web Archive Portal
At number six, we have the Stanford Web Archive Portal, a simple web tool. It enables you to see old versions of websites effortlessly. Just input the URL of your preferred website in the URL field and hit the ‘Submit’ button.
Like Wayback Machine, this website will also display a timeline and a calendar, showcasing all the snapshots.
Hence, follow the same steps you followed to view old versions of a website on the Wayback Machine to view older versions of a site on the Stanford Web Archive Portal. Here’s a screenshot of an old Facebook version in 2018 that we found by using this archive portal.
7. Memento Time Travel
Memento Time Travel is an aggregator of web archives that allows users to view old versions of a site. You’ll see several fields and a ‘Find’ button when you visit this website.
You need to fill these fields with information like your chosen website address, date, and past time. Then, click the ‘Find’ button.
This website then searches dozens of online archives and displays the snapshot closest to the entered date. Click on a link to your preferred snapshot.
You can now see an old version of your desired website.
8. archive.today
We’ll wrap this article with our last mention – archive.today. It features two URL fields along with buttons. One URL at the top is for archiving website content; the other is for seeking old versions of a website. Utilize each field as per your needs.
As you can see in the screenshot above, we’ll look up the old version of Bing. Let’s search it in the 2nd field. Once we search for it, we see that this website displays all the snapshots of Bing captured over time.
We’ll click on a snapshot, and this website will show us an old version of our chosen site based on the time we selected by choosing a snapshot.
Rounding Up
We hope you’ve got your answer to the query about how to see old versions of websites by now. You can easily view an older website version of your chosen site using any popular online tools listed in this article.
Whatever tool you select, ensure you follow the correct steps each old version of a site finder requires. Hence, that’s it for this article. You may read our other blogs to enrich your knowledge.
