Wayback

The Wayback, commonly known as the Wayback Machine, is a web archiving service operated by the Internet Archive. It periodically crawls and stores copies of public web pages, creating a chronological record of the Internet that users can explore to view past versions of a site.

The service was launched in 1996 by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit organization dedicated to digital preservation and access. It has grown to include billions of captured pages across numerous domains and languages.

Wayback collects snapshots by crawling websites and saving copies of their HTML, images, stylesheets, and other resources. Each capture is tagged with a timestamp and a URL, and users can navigate between captures via a calendar interface or a timeline.

Access is provided primarily through web.archive.org, which offers a search box and a calendar view. In addition to browsing, users can use the Save Page Now feature to create an on-demand snapshot of a page. Some APIs also exist for programmatic access.

Coverage is extensive but incomplete. Not all sites are captured, and robots.txt directives and automated blocks can prevent archiving. Dynamic content loaded via JavaScript, streaming media, and pages behind paywalls may not be fully captured.

The Wayback Machine is widely used by researchers, journalists, and historians as a resource for verifying past content, tracking changes, and restoring lost information. It also raises questions about copyright, privacy, and digital preservation policies.