Update: 1/1/2023
The Archives:
There are three main archives for US-related purposes, (though there are several other initiatives around the world, see wiki page List of Archiving Initiatives.).
web.archive.org – The Internet Archive / WAYBACKMACHINE is :
- the archive with more archived data
- does have keyword search
- does have a reverse image search via – rootabout.com
- BUT when you are searching for a url you will only find results for that exact url you typed
archive.is – Archive Today is :
- a better archive for finding websites and information as it will find subdomains or related hosts for the url that you searched
- can lookup social media and google maps
- consider using spoonbill in conjunction with archive.is searches on Twitter, spoonbill technique (below) will let you see all a Twitter account’s profile changes over time
- BUT it no keyword search tool
- reportedly has less data than the Internet Archive
https://webarchive.loc.gov/ – The Library of Congress Web Archive is categorized and its content was deliberately chosen, therefore I think it is best to search for you subject matter before looking for a specific website. Alternatively, if you see your website-of-interest is archived there, look at its category so you can maybe find other useful sites. :
- LOC is best used if you are looking for a specific subject. Go to the central page – https://www.loc.gov/web-archives/ – will let you search by subject, dates, locations, series, etc.
Related Tools:
https://carbondate.cs.odu.edu/ – attempts to figure out when a website was created (consider using this in conjunction with whois history searches from previous post)
http://timetravel.mementoweb.org/ – look up archived website from specified date and time
Rootabout.com – does reverse image searches in Internet Archive and Open Library
Spoonbill – See Twitter profiles’ changes over time by using the following url with the account username:
https://spoonbill%5B.%5Dio/twitter/data/search_ish <–input other twitter usernames here and remove the brackets from ” spoonbill[.]io ”
Search-ish 