The web's longing to restore pages that no longer exist, for the benefit of research and posterity. This happens because of an agreement between Google and the Internet Archive — a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting large swathes of the Internet — will now let users easily see historical versions of websites directly from Google search results. A step towards digital history preservation and accessibility of online information – As the American Pew Research Center reported last May – 38% of web pages no longer exist.
“The Internet is aging, so countless URLs now lead to digital ghosts – commented Mark Graham, director of the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine – as companies fail, governments change, disasters strike and content management systems spring up: all of these erase parts of online history. This digital time capsule Transforming browsing limited to the present through web history.”
The Wayback Machine is a tool that provides access to billions of archived web pages, ensuring they remain accessible to future generations and researchers. To take advantage of this feature in Google Search, click the menu next to the search results and select the 'Learn more about this page' option. From here you get a direct link to the Wayback Machine, which displays previous versions of the searched page.
“This collaboration with Google highlights the importance of the Web Archive and expands the reach of the Wayback Engine, which makes it easier for users to access and explore archived content, however, links to archived web pages are not available in cases where the rights holder has waived their site's archiving or if the web page violates content rules,” the Web Archive notes.
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