📚 Wayback Machine Checker

Part of the Website Health Suite — Comprehensive website trust, compliance, and technical SEO monitoring.

Scrape the Wayback Machine to find historical versions of web pages and recover lost online content. This scraper leverages the Internet Archive API to verify exactly when and how often specific URLs were saved. Whether you are dealing with a botched website migration, accidentally deleted articles, or lost domain history, this tool automates the process of finding the exact archived pages you need to restore your digital footprint.

Perfect for content recovery and historical compliance audits — Schedule runs after site migrations to recover 404 pages, or use for compliance teams that need legal evidence preservation. SEO experts and marketing teams rely on this scraper to audit historical website structures and recover valuable content that currently returns 404 errors. By scraping archive availability in bulk, you can bypass manual search steps and directly map out old URLs for immediate restoration.

You can schedule the scraper to run automatically, feeding it a list of target URLs to check against the archive database. Instead of loading a heavy browser, it quickly extracts the raw availability data you need directly from archive results. The output gives you precise details, including the direct link to the closest snapshot, the timestamp of the capture, and the original status code. Export your scraped URLs to a spreadsheet or integrate the results into your existing SEO tools to ensure no historical data is left behind. This makes it effortless to analyze websites, rebuild lost pages, and salvage search traffic efficiently.

Store Quickstart

Start with the Quickstart template to verify 3 archived URLs. For bulk verification, use Portfolio Archive Check with up to 500 URLs. For content recovery, use 404 Recovery after running Broken Link Checker.

Key Features

• 📚 Official Internet Archive API — Uses archive.org/wayback/available endpoint
• 📅 Closest-snapshot lookup — Find archived version nearest to any date
• 🔍 Availability check — Know if a URL was ever archived
• 📊 Snapshot count — Total archived versions per URL
• ⚡ Bulk processing — Up to 500 URLs per run
• 🔑 No API key needed — Free, open Internet Archive service

Use Cases

Who	Why
Compliance teams	Legal evidence preservation for regulated industries
Journalists	Verify historical versions of web pages that may have been edited
SEO recovery	Restore content from accidentally deleted pages
Brand protection	Track archived versions of competitor sites over time
Academic research	Cite archived web sources in publications

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
urls	string[]	(required)	URLs to check in archive (max 500)
closest	string		Target date YYYY-MM-DD (optional)
checkAvailability	boolean	true	Return availability details

Input Example

{
  "urls": ["https://example.com/old-article", "https://deleted-site.com"],
  "closest": "2020-01-01",
  "checkAvailability": true
}

Output

Field	Type	Description
url	string	URL queried
archived	boolean	Whether the URL has any snapshots in the Wayback Machine
closestSnapshotUrl	string	URL of the closest snapshot to the requested date
closestSnapshotDate	string	Date of the closest snapshot (YYYYMMDDhhmmss)
totalSnapshots	integer	Approximate total snapshots ever taken
firstSnapshotDate	string	Date of the earliest known snapshot
lastSnapshotDate	string	Date of the most recent snapshot

Output Example

{
  "url": "https://example.com/old-article",
  "available": true,
  "closestSnapshot": {
    "url": "https://web.archive.org/web/20200115000000/https://example.com/old-article",
    "timestamp": "20200115000000"
  },
  "archivedVersions": 23
}

API Usage

Run this actor programmatically using the Apify API. Replace YOUR_API_TOKEN with your token from Apify Console → Settings → Integrations.

cURL

curl -X POST "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/taroyamada~wayback-machine-checker/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=YOUR_API_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{ "urls": ["https://example.com/old-article", "https://deleted-site.com"], "closest": "2020-01-01", "checkAvailability": true }'

Python

from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient("YOUR_API_TOKEN")
run = client.actor("taroyamada/wayback-machine-checker").call(run_input={
  "urls": ["https://example.com/old-article", "https://deleted-site.com"],
  "closest": "2020-01-01",
  "checkAvailability": true
})

for item in client.dataset(run["defaultDatasetId"]).iterate_items():
    print(item)

JavaScript / Node.js

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });
const run = await client.actor('taroyamada/wayback-machine-checker').call({
  "urls": ["https://example.com/old-article", "https://deleted-site.com"],
  "closest": "2020-01-01",
  "checkAvailability": true
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

Tips & Limitations

• Use closestDate: "20200101" format (YYYYMMDD) to find a specific historical snapshot.
• Great for verifying when a page was first published or last modified.
• Combine with Broken Link Checker to recover content from dead pages via archive links.
• Wayback Machine is free but rate-limits aggressive callers — keep concurrency low.

FAQ

How far back can I check?

Internet Archive has snapshots back to 1996. Coverage depends on whether a URL was crawled.

Why is my URL 'not available'?

Either it was never archived, or Internet Archive excluded it (due to robots.txt or removal request).

Is this the same as running curl to archive.org?

Yes, but with bulk processing, error handling, and structured output for datasets.

Can I archive new URLs?

This actor only reads from the archive. To save NEW pages, use archive.org's /save/ endpoint.

Why is archived false for my URL?

The Internet Archive may not have crawled that URL yet, or robots.txt blocked it at the time.

Can I trigger a new snapshot?

Not via this actor. Use the Wayback Machine 'Save Page Now' feature manually.

Complete Your Website Health Audit

Website Health Suite — Build a comprehensive compliance and trust monitoring workflow:

1. Link & URL Health

• 🔗 Broken Link Checker — Find broken links across your entire site structure
• 🔗 Bulk URL Health Checker — Validate HTTP status, redirects, SSL, and response times

2. SEO & Metadata Quality

• 🏷️ Meta Tag Analyzer — Audit title tags, Open Graph, Twitter Cards, and hreflang
• Schema.org Validator — Validate JSON-LD and Microdata with quality scoring

3. Security & Email Deliverability

• DNS/DMARC Security Checker — Audit SPF, DKIM, DMARC, and MX records

4. Historical Data & Recovery (you are here)

• 📚 Wayback Machine Checker — Find archived snapshots for content recovery

Recommended workflow: Run Broken Link Checker → Export 404 URLs → Use Wayback Machine Checker to find archived versions → Restore content → Validate with URL Health Checker.

Other Website Tools:

• Sitemap Analyzer — SEO sitemap audit
• Site Governance Monitor — Robots.txt and schema monitoring
• Domain Trust Monitor — SSL expiry and security headers

Cost

Pay Per Event:

• actor-start: $0.01 (flat fee per run)
• dataset-item: $0.003 per output item

Example: 1,000 items = $0.01 + (1,000 × $0.003) = $3.01

No subscription required — you only pay for what you use.

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