The Online Time Machine, Part 2

Yesterday we showed some examples of how famous genealogy blogs looked several years ago. Towards the end of the post, we promised to share how you can find these examples yourself. So here’s a short explanation.

The way to do this is surprisingly simple. It requires an online tool called the Wayback Machine, which can be accessed via archive.org.

Once you’ve reached this utility, you simply need to enter the url of the website you want to see the past of.

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You’ll then be presented with a list of dates for which your chosen website has been archived. Some recent sites may only have one or two past versions to view. Others will have over one hundred. You can select any date, and simply click to view it.

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You’ll then be able to view the old site, and to click around and see what it used to look like. Simples.

An archived, 1990s version of Google