How to find a deleted web page

First, know what disappeared

Two very different situations look alike on screen. Either the page was taken down and the site still works: the server answers that it has nothing at that address. Or the whole site closed and its domain name leads nowhere: the browser says it cannot find the server.

In the first case the content has often simply moved, and the site's own search finds it. In the second, you have to go through an archive.

The six routes, in order

1. 1The Wayback Machine. At web.archive.org, paste the full address: the calendar shows the dates the page was archived. This is the route that works most often, and it keeps the images.
2. 2Another archive. archive.today holds captures the Wayback Machine does not have, recent pages in particular.
3. 3The exact title, in quotes. Search “the title of the page” with the quotes in your engine: a deleted article has very often been republished or quoted elsewhere.
4. 4A whole sentence from the text. If you remember one line, search it in quotes. Recipes, tutorials and instructions are copied around constantly.
5. 5The image. A reverse image search, from a screenshot you happened to keep, finds the original page or a copy.
6. 6The site itself. Search the keyword in the site's own search, look at its sitemap, or write to the author: a page that moved is often restored in one message.

Google's cache, long the first answer to this problem, was removed in February 2024. Results pages no longer offer a cached version, and the Wayback Machine has taken that role.

When nothing works

Some pages are nowhere: the ones behind an account, the ones behind a paywall, and shop product pages, which are rarely archived.

What is left then is what you remember. For a product, the brand and the model are often enough to find it at another seller. For a place, the name and the city. For an article, the author and the subject.

In other words, what saves a vanished page is never its address. It is the words and the image that somebody kept.

Never depend on it again

The lesson is simple: keep the find, not the link. In Trouvé, every page you keep becomes a card with its image, a short title, an excerpt and your note, all held on our side.

The day the address dies, the card is still there. You know what it was, what it looked like and why you kept it, and that is what finds a page again, not an address.

You can also see where you stand right now: our checking page knocks on every one of your bookmarks and tells you which ones are already lost. It is free and needs no account.