No, we don’t suffer from dementia: back to the past of websites

Oct 26th, 2008 | By | Category: Articles in English | Trackback URL

Just imagine all the mischief and horseplay you have ever committed in your life were recorded meticulously and could be retrieved after years and years. Impossible? You could not be more mistaken! This week one of our clients wanted to know why his ‘old’ website with the out-dated CI could still be found after he had revised and edited it. The answer is really easy: the web never forgets. You can delete the content in question from your own server but the situation will still be the same.

waybackmachine’ is a service that brings the past of the Internet back to your screen. In the above-mentioned scenario, this might seem like a bane, but under different circumstances it can be a blessing. For instances in a litigation when you have to prove whether certain information has been online and if this was the case when. By creating a copy of the pages and storing them, this search machine is able to dig deep into the past of the Internet and come up with interesting finds. However, it may be that some or even all images are lost but the basic html structure stays intact.

When doing a research, such copies of websites are a nice kind of assistance, too. They enable you to follow the CI development of a company and to see the direction it has been heading in over the past years. You see, the Internet reveals more than one may think. You only have to be able to read between the lines. Why don’t you embark on a time travel as well? Our bürosport blog with interesting articles about team knoefler-journalist preparing for the Römerlauf race in Obernburg has recently become a separate category of this blog. By entering http://web.archive.org/web/20020101000000-20080421153850/http://www.buerosportblog.de/ you can check out the version from March 2007. Would you have recognized the page? By the way: all the information on how to keep your pages out of the index of ‘waybackmachine’ can be found here.


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