The internet is full of great surprises and tools that can be very useful when you learn to use them. One of the best tools you can find is the Wayback Machine, which is also considered as a perfect method to go back in time.
This is a new tool that belongs to the Internet Archive website where you can view the different web pages in previous years. Also, It has a repertoire that includes billions of web pages to view and are accessible to all audiences.
The latter, despite having been created only for a specific audience that included researchers. And if you want to learn more about the Wayback Machine, you just have to keep reading, to learn about its functions and learn a little more about how to use it.
History of Archive.org
In order to understand a little more about the Wayback Machine, it is necessary to know the history of archive.org or the Internet Archive. This is known as a non-profit organization that had the vision of being able to offer access to a large amount of internet content. Such content may have been removed or modified over the years.
This organization with the web address of archive.org was created by Brewster Kahle in the company of Bruce Gilliat in 1996. This web page allows access to great content completely free of web pages, books, multimedia and programs. We are talking about the largest online library in the world, which includes already deleted websites.
This organization has managed to collect a large amount of information characterized by its 70 Petabytes of space, which also includes backup copies. As impossible as it may seem, this organization is totally private, so it is possible to enjoy access without providing the IP address.
And as if that were not enough, it also has the HTTPS protocol for greater security. In addition, it is maintained thanks to donations, collection for the digital book service and subsidies to date.
What is the Wayback Machine exactly?
Now that you know the story behind the Internet Archive, we will explain in more detail what the Wayback Machine is. This is known as a crucial part of the Internet Archive website, because it was created to be able to capture deleted or modified web content, at every change.
This means that, If you want to access an old version of a web page, you will be able to view all the changes that were made. In the same way, you can observe the modifications that a web page had through the captures made by the Wayback Machine.
It was in 2001 when the Internet Archive made all its content available to the general public, since this type of information was only accessible to researchers. However, the Wayback Machine had been collecting various data from the web since 1996. And by the time it was accessible to the general public, it had a storage of over 10 million web pages.
How does the Wayback Machine work?
Surely you will wonder how the Wayback Machine works and its function is quite simple. Upon its release, the tool captured content from a website after modification or deletion. So it is possible to view even some web pages that have been deleted over time.
Similarly, the main function was to be able to save the content that no longer existed within the web page for research purposes. Nevertheless, it was delivered to the general public and has been very useful to be able to investigate different contents. For that, Wayback Machine makes use of two main functions, which we explain below.
Storage and collections
Currently this web page contains a lot of historical content that is maintained on Linux nodes. Basically the job of the Wayback Machine is to obtain all the information that is in the public domain through a tracking system.
Even so, in the case of some web pages not all the content is included because it is restricted or may be in the database, to which you do not have access. So the level of tracking will clearly depend on the way a web page is created and how it offers its content.
For web pages that have a shorter publication time, there is a greater possibility of having more of their content. Since the Internet Archive has been using the Archive-It.org tool since 2005, it is possible to collect digital content that has been partially cached.
Wayback Machine Crawl
Since the beginning of the internet, there have been the well-known web crawlers or also known as spiders. These bots fulfill the function of keeping browsing the internet to index the different web pages that exist today. And this makes it an essential tool for all browsers.
In the case of the Wayback Machine, crawlers are also used to create a snapshot depending on the web page. Clearly, the higher the popularity of the page, the need for constant indexing may be necessary. Nevertheless, smaller web pages are also crawled.
Only those web pages that have greater security such as a password or that are determined not to be tracked are excepted. That way, the Wayback Machine does its job and makes a snapshot of publicly available content.
How to use Wayback Machine?
Finally, we focus on explaining the easiest way to use the Wayback Machine. We know that this tool has a comfortable interface that will allow you to use it, even when you don’t have much experience.
Wayback Machine allows you to access snapshots that are part of the history of a website, just by entering the name in the search bar. Once the page is found, you will be able to see the day and time a website was archived. You simply have to click and enjoy access to said web page.
It should be noted that crawls not only include the main page of a web, but also allow you to access all the content of that page during the date. So that you can know each aspect that has been saved at a specific point in time.
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