Wayback Lookup
Find the closest archived snapshot of any URL on a given date. See what a competitor's landing page said two years ago, or audit your own claims over time.
Why this exists
Vendor diligence is half claims-checking. Competitor intel is half what they said before they pivoted. Both require the version of the page that exists on the snapshot, not on the live site. The Internet Archive has captured almost a trillion URLs since 1996.
Paste a URL and a target date; this tries to find the closest archived capture and links you straight to it. When the Internet Archive's JSON API is unavailable (it goes down for hours at a time), you still get a direct link that the Wayback Machine resolves server-side.
Frequently asked questions
What does Wayback Lookup find?
The closest archived snapshot of any URL on a given date, sourced from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. Useful for seeing what a competitor's landing page actually said two years ago, or auditing your own claims over time.
How comprehensive is the Internet Archive?
The Wayback Machine has crawled and archived over 950 billion web pages since 1996. Coverage is excellent for popular sites, less complete for low-traffic or recently-launched sites. Snapshots aren't continuous — typical popular site has snapshots every few weeks; less popular sites may have monthly or quarterly gaps.
When is this used?
Verifying a competitor's historical claims (did they actually offer this product back then?), legal evidence of website content at a point in time, journalism on policy changes hidden via website edits, and content-strategy research.