When Good Websites Go Missing

brockbraddock · 10-13-2008, 10:30 AM

This just happened to me this weekend and it's happened before so I thought I would share what I did to get the information I needed.

A couple of months ago I had bookmarked a blog post that was relevant to a project I was working on. I won't go into exactly what the blog post was but it provided some key information relevant to my project. So, I bookmarked it and went on Sure enough, I needed the info this weekend and the website was gone. Shut down. Nothing accessible.

First thing I did was go to the Way Back Machine (google it) and entered the website URL in the box provided. The Way Back Machine is a site that maintains an archive of 85 billion web pages starting from 1996 and and going to the present. What makes this really great is WaybackMachine keeps records of all previously archived versions of the website so you can go back in time to find pages that may have been deleted or changed.

Unfortunately in my case although this particular blog was included in the archive the blog post that I was looking for had not been archived yet.

So, my next stop was to Google. Good old Google keeps a cache of every website it has indexed. Just go to google and try to find the exact page you are looking using search. In my case since I had the post bookmarked I knew what the exact URL was so I just entered that URL and it came up as the first item in the search results. Now, since the website was gone clicking the link title was no use as it just lead to the original unavailable page. But if you look at the bottom of any result in google you'll see a link that reads, Cached. Clicking that link lead me to the exact post I was looking for and I was then able to print it out and save it. (don't bookmark it because when google visits the page again and sees the website is down they'll delete the cache.)

These techniques won't always work but they've saved my butt a number of times. The lession here is when you find something that you know you're going to need later, print it out and save in a binder OR save the webpage to your computer.

Brock

marciayudkin · 10-16-2008, 11:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brockbraddock

This just happened to me this weekend and it's happened before so I thought I would share what I did to get the information I needed.

I am currently updating a report I last updated in 2006. It has more than 400 resource links in it, and about 1/3 of the links have gone bad in two years. Of those, about half are gone from the web altogether, but the other half have moved their page without a redirect.

I was able to find the new page by going to Google and doing an Advanced Search just for that site, or going to the home page of the URL and following the current navigation scheme.

I'm not why so many sites decide to sacrifice traffic from links and bookmarks by moving the pages around!

Marcia Yudkin
Author, 6 Steps to Free Publicity and 10 other books
http://www.yudkin.com/6steps.htm

10-13-2008, 10:30 AM	#1
brockbraddock The Lazy Warrior Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Charlotte, NC Posts: 33 Thanks: 1 Thanked 1 Time in 1 Post	When Good Websites Go Missing This just happened to me this weekend and it's happened before so I thought I would share what I did to get the information I needed. A couple of months ago I had bookmarked a blog post that was relevant to a project I was working on. I won't go into exactly what the blog post was but it provided some key information relevant to my project. So, I bookmarked it and went on Sure enough, I needed the info this weekend and the website was gone. Shut down. Nothing accessible. First thing I did was go to the Way Back Machine (google it) and entered the website URL in the box provided. The Way Back Machine is a site that maintains an archive of 85 billion web pages starting from 1996 and and going to the present. What makes this really great is WaybackMachine keeps records of all previously archived versions of the website so you can go back in time to find pages that may have been deleted or changed. Unfortunately in my case although this particular blog was included in the archive the blog post that I was looking for had not been archived yet. So, my next stop was to Google. Good old Google keeps a cache of every website it has indexed. Just go to google and try to find the exact page you are looking using search. In my case since I had the post bookmarked I knew what the exact URL was so I just entered that URL and it came up as the first item in the search results. Now, since the website was gone clicking the link title was no use as it just lead to the original unavailable page. But if you look at the bottom of any result in google you'll see a link that reads, Cached. Clicking that link lead me to the exact post I was looking for and I was then able to print it out and save it. (don't bookmark it because when google visits the page again and sees the website is down they'll delete the cache.) These techniques won't always work but they've saved my butt a number of times. The lession here is when you find something that you know you're going to need later, print it out and save in a binder OR save the webpage to your computer. Brock
	I like "Set and Forget" projects... things I can do once that generate revenue for months or even years. Here are some of the Set and Forget projects that I am currently profiting from... www.setandforgetprojects.com