There are various reasons why you would need to see the archived version of the page: to see the content of (temporally) unavailable page, to analyze on-page SEO (Google text only cache), to see when the page was archived by Google (Google cache), to see how the page used to look like or when it was first recorded (Wayback machine).
Here are the tools to help you accomplish any of the tasks:
1. Resurrect Pages
I personally don’t use it but many people report it is one of the most comprehensive ones. One of its best features is the ability to open archived versions in a new tab. It is accessed via the context menu on right-clicking on a web link. ("The idea is that information can be gleamed from a URL from these two sources without you ever making a single connection to the site in question".)
Supported archiving / mirror services:
- Google Cache
- Google Text only Cache
- Yahoo! Cache
- The Internet Archive
- MSN Cache
- Gigablast
- WebCite
The tool can be accessed via:
- Right-click context menu;
- Keyboard shortcut: Ctrl-Shift-U
- Sidebar
2. Passive Cache
My personal favorite because I love Google text only cache and use for every page I am diagnosing.
Supported archiving / mirror services:
- Google’s text-only cache service
- Archive.org Wayback Machine
3. ErrorZilla Plus
This extension replaces Firefox default error page, which adds some useful tools to aid your troubleshooting.
Supported archiving / mirror services:
- Google Cache
- Wayback
The are also a few proxy and server settings for additional aid:
- Ping (use a server to ping the target server)
- Trace (trace the network route from you to the server)
- Coralize (use Coral CDN proxy to connect again)
- Proxify (use your custom web proxy to connect)
You are also able to quickly check the domain Whois which I find a really useful option as well.
Very useful Ann, as always you bring me what’s really needed, without the sales pitch. Thanks :)
Good stuff, surprisingly, I was unaware of any of these… I have previously been using the Wayback machine for archived web pages.
Thanks Ann
Great tool, Thanks Ann
Very usefuy indeed, thanks for a useful and informative post.
Always nice to have additional tools.. Nice!
This might come in handy, thank you very much Ann.
I think of two things with these kind of tools.
1: How do they handle if a site is sold a few times? Say I want to find out what was on the site http://www.hype.com before it became a site for the energy drink, is that still cached and reachable?
2: How large will Google’s cached storage become?:-)