Question #52: What’s the Best Internet Archive to Check Out Old Websites?

Answer: The best website that we've found that shows previous layouts of a website is an archive site. Let us explain.

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The Best Internet Archive to Check Out Old Websites…

The best Internet archive and I believe it’s the largest is called www.Archive.org. You’ll also see it says Internet Archive WayBackMachine. WayBackMachine.com and .org doesn't work anymore. Archive.org does. Go there and you will be shocked at the 85 billion pages they have.

What do you use this for?  Let’s say for example, I want to go to my oldest site, which is MarketingWithPostcards.com. Let’s say I wanted to see what it looked like February 23, 2001.  I can click on that date and it says visit this site later that’s not available.

Now I’m going to go to December 14, 2001.  If you go there you’ll see my old website MarketingWithPostcards.com and one of the oldest opt-in boxes ever.  There’s the evidence right there.

I also have one of the oldest squeeze pages ever this is going back to 2001.  People didn't have opt-in pages in 2001 or 2000.  They didn't have anchor tags back then.  They didn't ask for zip codes.  They didn't have long sales letters like this.

If you want to look at the old web pages 2002-2008, why is this helpful to use the archive website?  If you want to lurk or spy on your competitors and see the evolution of their websites Archive.org can get you there. Question 52: What’s the best Internet archive to check out old websites and see the evolution of how your competitors have evolved over the years… Archive.org. If you didn't know about it, there it is.  Keep it.  Once you know it, it’s always yours.

I don’t buy this whole bit it takes 30 days to create a habit.  I think that’s rubbish.  Let’s say you have the habit of taking certain roads going to work.  If you find a shortcut after day three, you're going to take that shortcut forever.

Once you learn about Archive.org it’s not going to take you 30 days to go there or get in the habit of going there.  You’ll go there from day one.  Hopefully you’ll take that shortcut and know that as far as archiving goes, you're going to go to Archive.org and check it out.

As far as screen capture goes, or video capture, if you want to start utilizing a free resource, JingProject.com, and Snagit.com are the two sources. Once you have those sources they're yours for life that’s the beauty of knowing these tools.  Once someone has found them for you they are yours for life and hopefully you’ll never forget them, especially if you write them down and you’ll have them in the transcripts. Question #52: What’s the best Internet archive website on the net? In my opinion: Archive.org.