Did you know that the Internet Archive has more than digitally accessible books?
It has a second nifty feature that comes in very handy when a genealogy research click leads to that annoying 404 error message:
PAGE NOT FOUND
And, the website seemed to have had something really helpful to your genealogy research.
Guess what! There is a way around that problem and the solution is:
Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine was launched during the infancy of the internet on 10 May 1996. That means that it is very, very likely that a website now gone was visited at least once during the time the website was accessible.
The best part about using the Wayback machine is that you only need to know one piece of information – the URL address of the site. A quick online search of the site name will probably bring up a hit that includes the URL, even if the site isn’t currently accessible.
Just type in the URL and hit ENTER.
This blog is alive and well, but let’s say someone wanted to access the County History links housed on Empty Branches, tried the URL and got that pesky error message.
All that someone would have to do is go to the Wayback Machine, enter www.emptybranchesonthefamilytree dot com and a graph similar to this one will appear:
This blog launched in 2014 and the Wayback Machine actually found it that same year. There were a few visits through 2019, but look at all the snapshots taken between 2020-2023.
I chose to look at 2022 and this calendar appeared:
I then clicked on 18 December 2022 and brought up:
This page has LIVE links, so I can click on the County Histories tab and I’m good to go!
That’s all there is to it.
Just remember that the date you choose must be at or after the date of the information posted that you are seeking.
This link works on my blog, but I’ve updated the categories since December 2022. This visits displays everything that existed on my blog up to 18 December 2022.
So, the next time you find that the website you needed is gone, just head to the Wayback Machine, enter the URL and thank Internet Archive for hosting this terrific product.
Did I mention it’s free? Yep, it’s FREE!