Thanks for asking!
If the website you're trying to locate was linked to others, or if it
is more than six months old, it's likely that it may be located using
the Wayback Machine.
You'll need to know the site url, or if not, at least a portion of the
site or page name. The Wayback Machine's advanced search allows the
use of * as a wildcard character.
WayBack Machine
http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
It might also be possible to initiate a search of past domain
ownership, if the site has it's own domain.
History of Whois
http://www.whois.sc/
The site might also be "saved" in the Google cache. Search on the site
name or keywords, then select the Cache link to view Google's cache of
pages spidered in past crawls.
If you would care to name the site, we can search more specifically for you.
larre-ga |
Clarification of Answer by
larre-ga
on
16 Jun 2004 02:04 PDT
If the website has moved, you might be able to locate it by picking
out specific words and phrases that are likely to have remained the
same, and using Google to search for those phrases, enclosed withing
quote marks.
For example, if the site has a descriptive phrase, or subtitle, search
on that subtitle. For example, if the site's subtitle is "The Bluejean
Capital", entering that phrase, with quotes, into the Google Search
Box. You might also try searching on link titles, site categories, or
specific products or information items.
---l
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
rghjudi-ga
on
18 Jun 2004 01:21 PDT
I'm still searching got to website, but have to look deeper, I am not
computer literate so it takes me awhile, I'm an old dog learning new
tricks. You have been very helpful but can you be more specific, I
have gotten as far as columns of dates covering a number of years.
Iwant info on one of the dates but it comes up error? ???
|
Clarification of Answer by
larre-ga
on
18 Jun 2004 08:37 PDT
You're doing very well so far.
Is it only the one specific date (or range of dates) that comes up in error?
The Internet Archive FAQ offers several Help items that may explain
what is happening when you click on individual dates:
Why isn't the site I'm looking for in the archive?
http://www.archive.org/about/faqs.php#5
"Some sites may not be included because the automated crawlers were
unaware of their existence at the time of the crawl. It's also
possible that some sites were not archived because they were password
protected, blocked by robots.txt, or otherwise inaccessible to our
automated systems. Siteowners might have also requested that their
sites be excluded from the Wayback Machine. When this has occurred,
you will see a "blocked site error" message. When a site is excluded
because of robots.txt you will see a "robots.txt query exclusion
error" message."
Some sites are not available because of robots.txt or other
exclusions. What does that mean?
http://www.archive.org/about/faqs.php#14
"The Standard for Robot Exclusion (SRE) is a means by which web site
owners can instruct automated systems not to crawl their sites. Web
site owners can specify files or directories that are disallowed from
a crawl, and they can even create specific rules for different
automated crawlers. All of this information is contained in a file
called robots.txt. While robots.txt has been adopted as the universal
standard for robot exclusion, compliance with robots.txt is strictly
voluntary. In fact most web sites do not have a robots.txt file, and
many web crawlers are not programmed to obey the instructions anyway.
However, Alexa Internet, the company that crawls the web for the
Internet Archive, does respect robots.txt instructions, and even does
so retroactively. If a web site owner decides he / she prefers not to
have a web crawler visiting his / her files and sets up robots.txt on
the site, the Alexa crawlers will stop visiting those files and will
make unavailable all files previously gathered from that site. This
means that sometimes, while using the Internet Archive Wayback
Machine, you may find a site that is unavailable due to robots.txt
(you will see a "robots.txt query exclusion error" message). Sometimes
a web site owner will contact us directly and ask us to stop crawling
or archiving a site, and we endevor to comply with these requests.
When you come accross a "blocked site error" message, that means that
a siteowner has made such a request and it has been honored."
What does 'failed connection' and other error messages mean?
http://www.archive.org/about/faqs.php#201
"These are the main error messages you will see while searching the
Wayback Machine: Failed Connection: The server that the particular
piece of information lives on is down. Generally these clear up within
two weeks. Robots.txt Query Exclusion: A robots.txt is something that
a site owner puts on their site that keeps crawlers like our own from
crawling them. The Internet Archive retroactively respects all
robots.txt. Blocked Site Error: Site owners and/or copyright holders
have requested that the site be excluded from the Wayback Machine. For
exclusion criteria, please see our exclusion policy (we use the same
one used and developed by other digital repositories and archivists
both academic and non-academic)."
Why am I getting broken or gray images on a site?
http://www.archive.org/about/faqs.php#18
"Broken images (when there is a small red "x" where the image should
be) occur when the images are not available on our servers. Usually
this means that we did not archive them. Gray images are the result of
robots.txt exclusions. The site in question may have blocked robot
access to their images directory."
If you'll describe (or copy and paste) the error messages here, I will
try help you track down explanations.
---larre
|
