Most sites will be crawled during our regular archiving efforts as long as they are fairly well-linked from other sources. Please check the BETA test Wayback Machine for your site to make sure we don’t already have it archived.
Sites in the Wayback Machine may have been crawled by the Internet Archive, Alexa Internet, or another partner who donates content for preservation. There are two ways to make sure crawlers can find your site.
- Get your site listed in major directories, like dmoz.org, or encourage other, popular sites to link to you. To add your site to the Open Directory, go to http://www.dmoz.org/, find the category your site should be listed in, and click the “Add URL” link at the top of the page. We highly recommend reading their submission guidelines first at http://dmoz.org/add.html. This method will help your site be discovered by everyone, not just us!
- Submit the URL of your site to Alexa Internet to be crawled. Visit this page to tell them to crawl you. Sites crawled via this method will not appear in the Wayback Machine for at least 6 months, but this is an easy way to make sure your site gets noticed.
In all cases, ensure that your site’s robots.txt rules and in-page META robots directives allow crawlers to capture your site.
UPDATE 2/7/2011: At some point in the past couple of months, Alexa removed the ability to submit your site for crawling (option 2 above). At the moment, we do not have an alternative method of submission. As always, the best way to make sure we find your site is to make sure lots of people link to it. We’ll notify users on this page if another solution becomes available. Thanks!
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[...] that a site be archived, unless the site is in imminent danger of being taken down. See the FAQ How can I get my site included in the Wayback Machine? for more [...]
Thank you! This was really helpful.
Hi!
I’m amazed for discovering here old versions of my websites. It’s very interesting remembering how they look like years ago.
Thanks!
I can’t belive it. I have seen how was the oldest web on my work and it is very funny to have a look at this. The name for this tool is great (Waybackmachine). 7 years ago the things were much different than today. Looks like 50 years, and it’s just 7.
Thank you very much for your work.
i had a 2 man band once, had a great site (at the time for it) Hadnt seen it in Years ! .. randomly i stunble upon your site, type in electronicstory.com … And shed some melancholic But Happy Tears!
Awesome service , Thanx ! Brought an old hobby back to life for me. Ill be “registering” all mah sites for this eternal goodness.
btw i was able to add that old lost site to my resume thanx to you.
Much Respects
1. Any time someone tries to access the archive for a site, you should add it to your list.
2. Could there be a Firefox extension that submits everything we visit for archiving?
its fun to see my old pics and sites. Thanks for saving them.
Thank heavens for your service. As valuable as your site is, it is disappointing that you don’t get more publicity. So many people I talk with do not even realize that archive.org is available.