About the Wayback Machine

Browse or look through 85 billion web pages from the past. You can find a webpage for example from Nike from as Wayback as1997 or as recently as a few months ago. To start, type in or cut and paste the web address of a site or page iinto the Take Me Back text box and press enter. If you do not know the address but know the name of the site you want to find, type the name into the Wayback Machine search box in the upper left hand corner of the Wayback Machine website. Then select from the dates shown to see the page from that date. The pages there will link to other archived pages from that date or as close as possible. Keyword searches do not work in the Wayback Machine.

Some sites are not available because of robots.txtweb site owners can instruct automated systems or not to crawl their sites.

How large is the Wayback Machine?

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine contains almost 2 petabytes of data and is currently growing at a rate of 20 terabytes per month. This eclipses the amount of text contained in the world's largest libraries, including the Library of Congress.

Why is the Internet Archive collecting sites from the Internet? What makes the information useful? Most societies place importance on preserving artifacts of their culture and heritage. Without such artifacts, civilization has no memory and no mechanism to learn from its successes and failures. Our culture now produces more and more artifacts in digital form. The Archive's mission is to help preserve those artifacts and create an Internet library for researchers, historians, and scholars. The Archive collaborates with institutions including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian.

Can people download sites from the Wayback? Our terms of use specify that users of the Wayback Machine are not to copy data from the collection. If there are special circumstances that you think the Archive should consider, please contact info at archive dot org.

How do I cite Wayback Machine urls in MLA format? This question is a newer one. We asked MLA to help us with how to cite an archived URL in correct format. They did say that there is no established format for resources like the Wayback Machine, but it's best to err on the side of more information. You should cite the webpage as you would normally, and then give the Wayback Machine information. They provided the following example: McDonald, R. C. "Basic Canary Care." _Robirda Online_. 12 Sept. 2004. 18 Dec. 2006 . _Internet Archive_. < http://web.archive.org/web/20041009202820/http://www.robirda.com/cancare.html>. They added that if the date that the information was updated is missing, one can use the closest date in the Wayback Machine. Then comes the date when the page is retrieved and the original URL. Neither URL should be underlined in the bibliography itself. Thanks MLA!

What is the Wayback Machine's Copyright Policy? The Internet Archive respects the intellectual property rights and other proprietary rights of others. The Internet Archive may, in appropriate circumstances and at its discretion, remove certain content or disable access to content that appears to infringe the copyright or other intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that your copyright has been violated by material available through the Internet Archive, please provide the Internet Archive Copyright Agent with the following information:

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