the things that may cause this are:
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2025 5:30 am
If you look at our collection of archived sites, you will find some broken pages, missing graphics, and some sites that aren’t archived at all. Some of
Robots.txt — A site’s robots.txt document may have prevented the crawling of a site.
Javascript — Javascript elements are often hard to archive, but especially if they generate links without having the full name in the page. Plus, if javascript needs to contact the originating server in order to work, it will fail when archived.
Server side image maps — Like any functionality on the web, if it needs to contact the originating server in order to work, it will fail when archived.
Orphan pages — If there are no links to your pages, the robot won’t find it (the robots don’t enter queries in search boxes.)
As a general rule of thumb, simple html is the easiest to archive.
Can I find sites by searching for words that are in their pages?
No, at least not yet. Site Search for the Wayback Machine will help you find the homepages of sites, based on words people have used to describe those sites, as opposed to words that appear on pages from sites.
Can I still find sites in the Wayback Machine if I just know the URL?
Yes, just enter a domain or URL the way you have in the past and press the “Browse History” button.
Why are some of the dots on the calendar page different colors?
We color the dots, and links, associated with mobile database individual web captures, or multiple web captures, for a given day. Blue means the web server result code the crawler got for the related capture was a 2nn (good); Green means the crawlers got a status code 3nn (redirect); Orange means the crawler got a status code 4nn (client error), and Red means the crawler saw a 5nn (server error). Most of the time you will probably want to select the blue dots or links.
How does the Wayback Machine behave with Javascript turned off?
If you have Javascript turned off, images and links will be from the live web, not from our archive of old Web files.
How did I end up on the live version of a site? or I clicked on X date, but now I am on Y date, how is that possible?
Not every date for every site archived is 100% complete. When you are surfing an incomplete archived site the Wayback Machine will grab the closest available date to the one you are in for the links that are missing. In the event that we do not have the link archived at all, the Wayback Machine will look for the link on the live web and grab it if available. Pay attention to the date code embedded in the archived url. This is the list of numbers in the middle; it translates as
Robots.txt — A site’s robots.txt document may have prevented the crawling of a site.
Javascript — Javascript elements are often hard to archive, but especially if they generate links without having the full name in the page. Plus, if javascript needs to contact the originating server in order to work, it will fail when archived.
Server side image maps — Like any functionality on the web, if it needs to contact the originating server in order to work, it will fail when archived.
Orphan pages — If there are no links to your pages, the robot won’t find it (the robots don’t enter queries in search boxes.)
As a general rule of thumb, simple html is the easiest to archive.
Can I find sites by searching for words that are in their pages?
No, at least not yet. Site Search for the Wayback Machine will help you find the homepages of sites, based on words people have used to describe those sites, as opposed to words that appear on pages from sites.
Can I still find sites in the Wayback Machine if I just know the URL?
Yes, just enter a domain or URL the way you have in the past and press the “Browse History” button.
Why are some of the dots on the calendar page different colors?
We color the dots, and links, associated with mobile database individual web captures, or multiple web captures, for a given day. Blue means the web server result code the crawler got for the related capture was a 2nn (good); Green means the crawlers got a status code 3nn (redirect); Orange means the crawler got a status code 4nn (client error), and Red means the crawler saw a 5nn (server error). Most of the time you will probably want to select the blue dots or links.
How does the Wayback Machine behave with Javascript turned off?
If you have Javascript turned off, images and links will be from the live web, not from our archive of old Web files.
How did I end up on the live version of a site? or I clicked on X date, but now I am on Y date, how is that possible?
Not every date for every site archived is 100% complete. When you are surfing an incomplete archived site the Wayback Machine will grab the closest available date to the one you are in for the links that are missing. In the event that we do not have the link archived at all, the Wayback Machine will look for the link on the live web and grab it if available. Pay attention to the date code embedded in the archived url. This is the list of numbers in the middle; it translates as