The internet is bigger than you thank. Do you have any idea about how many websites are there on the internet? According to a recent survey by Netcraft shows 1.8 billion websites are there on the internet. According to Verisign domain name industry brief, there are about a total of 332.4 million domain names registered. In these 1.8 billion websites only a few hundred dominate the Internet. Less than one million websites, that is 0.1%, account for over fifty percent of web traffic. Out of the 1.8 billion websittes, less than 200 million are active.
The websites and webpages undergoing rapid change over the period of time. New technologies and new content change the appearance and design of webpages. Web pages have an average shelf life of nearly 90 days. Due to regular updates and changes in the content may change the appearance of a webpage. Do you want to see how Google appears in 1998? Do you want to see how Facebook looks in 1998?
There are some digital archives available to see how a website evolve over the years. Let’s check a few of them.
Wayback Machine
(https://web.archive.org/)
The Wayback machine is the digital archive of the World Wide Web on the Internet. It was launched in 2001 by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization in California, United States. The Wayback Machine began archiving cached web pages in 1996, as of 2018, the Wayback Machine contained more than 25 petabytes of data.
You can see a website over the years by entering the website address or entering URL or some words related to the site’s home page in the Wayback machine’s search box. Now you can see a timeline in a calendar format. In the timeline at the calendar pick a year. Select any of the circles from the calendar for that year. Remember, only the days highlighted with a circle contain an archive. The popular website has more circles than a less known website indicating more archives. You can see how Google appears in 1998 and Facebook in 2005.
Archive.today
(http://archive.is/)
The archive is a time capsule for web pages. This site takes a snapshot of a webpage. You can see the snapshot at anytime online even if the original page disappears. The site saves a text and a graphical copy of the page for better accuracy and provides a short and reliable link to an unalterable record of any web page.
PageFreezer
(https://www.pagefreezer.com/)
PageFreezer automatically archiver websites, social media pages and enterprise collaboration in a cloud-based dashboard. It is a pay per use service, but you can use the trial service to know how it works.
You can find a similar solution to archive webpages, social media pages, and other resources digitally on a cloud dashboard. Mirrorweb, is one such service, it archives a website in an ISO compliant, legally admissible format that complies with record keeping standards. This service offers more ability to archive content, From Twitter to Facebook, you can archive complex content by retaining all the functionality and interactive elements. The paid version of the service offers, migration and archiving of unlimited websites and social media accounts to their Amazon web service powered SaaS platform.
