In a significant step forward for digital preservation, Google Search is now making it easier than ever to access the past. Starting today, users everywhere can view archived versions of webpages directly through Google Search, with a simple link to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
How It Works
To access this new feature, conduct a search on Google as usual. Next to each search result, you’ll find three dots—clicking on these will bring up the “About this Result” panel. Within this panel, select “More About This Page” to reveal a link to the Wayback Machine page for that website.
Through this direct link, you’ll be able to view previous versions of a webpage via the Wayback Machine, offering a snapshot of how it appeared at different points in time.
A Commitment to Preservation
At the Internet Archive, our mission is to provide, “Universal Access to All Knowledge.” The Wayback Machine, one of our best-known services, provides access to billions of archived webpages, ensuring that the digital record remains accessible for future generations.
As Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, explains:
“The web is aging, and with it, countless URLs now lead to digital ghosts. Businesses fold, governments shift, disasters strike, and content management systems evolve—all erasing swaths of online history. Sometimes, creators themselves hit delete, or bow to political pressure. Enter the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine: for more than 25 years, it’s been preserving snapshots of the public web. This digital time capsule transforms our “now-only” browsing into a journey through internet history. And now, it’s just a click away from Google search results, opening a portal to a fuller, richer web—one that remembers what others have forgotten.”
This collaboration with Google underscores the importance of web archiving and expands the reach of the Wayback Machine, making it even easier for users to access and explore archived content. However, the link to archived webpages will not be available in instances where the rights holder has opted out of having their site archived or if the webpage violates content policies.
For more information about the Wayback Machine and how you can explore the web’s history, visit https://web.archive.org/.
Frankly I was expecting a browser extension\add-on for this was was ready to use it. It is on the one-hand good to see you cozying up to Alphabet. Get yourself as far behind their walls of lawyers as you can, it seems like the next few years will be difficult to protect all the good you do. On the other hand, I have all the natural worries about what this relationship might mean to decisions you make in the future.
That said, may the wind always be at your back and the sun upon your face.
another hope for Archive.org
Google is paying for this right? Because you’re about to crash the site with that much traffic
Nice, but why not on DuckDuckGo ?
This is great work! Do you know if the archived pages are indexed? I’m thinking this would be amazing for pages that we have taken down from our live site. They wouldn’t have a result in Google as of now so wouldn’t have the ellipsis click through to the way back that way. Thanks!
Maybe there’s a way to use virustotal.com’s malware scan service for archive.org?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VirusTotal
I was also thinking of invidious.io as well since youtube videos can be censored or taken down for various reasons.
Good things, you can make some traces can’t be erased… HeyHey
Hey Chris – does this reflect the latest snapshot of the site or is there another logic to it. One of my usecases is to navigate to a specific year’s version of a website, for that do I still have to navigate to Wayback’s main website or is there a way to do that from Google Search as well?
Hi, Emma. I have the same question: After clicking on the ellipsis … will Google search return the most recently saved version of the webpage that is available from the Internet Archive, while remaining on website google dot com? Or will the ellipsis provide a drop-down link to archive dot org (which then has whatever range of dates for which the page is available)? A close reading of this portion of the post suggests that only a link will be displayed in the Google search results, but I’m unsure:
Thank you Internet Archive & Google!!! I was very disappointment when Google took away the ability to view a cached copy a search result, as sometimes that was the only copy that existed, at least outside of the Wayback Machine. This is certainly a great replacement for the missing cached copy feature!
It is a shame The Time Machine or the Wayback Machine, being sued for letting people “read” books online, in the complete absence of libraries being open for such…
nice . thanks archive
This new function will be a welcome addition to Google.