When sites go down, there are actually a few ways to access them through the magic of caches and archives.
Access Cached Pages Through Google
Google caches a large portion of the internet, and it’s easy to access those caches when a site isn’t available. All you have to do is search for a URL prepended with “cache:” like this:
That’ll take you to the cached version of sanzar-adnan.blogspot.com. You can replace it with any URL to get the latest version Google currently has in its cache.
Alternatively, the Google Cache Bookmarklet helps you access the cached version of any page you visit with just one click. Just visit any page, and if it fails to load you can click the bookmarklet to visit the cached version immediately.
Another place to find old versions of pages is the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. While you won’t find quite as much as you will on Google’s cache, you will be able to go back further and see what a certain site was like in the distant past. The more popular the site the greater the number of archived pages the Wayback Machine will provide, but generally speaking you won’t be able to access too many individual pages and only the landing page of the site.
Access Overwhelmed Sites with Coral Cache
Sometimes a web page goes down due to excessive traffic. In this case, a service called Coral Cache may be able to help. Simply append .nyud.net to the end of the domain name you want to access (e.g. http://sanzar-adnan.blogspot.com.nyud.net) and you’ll get Coral’s cached version. This may not work for every site, but it’s worth a try when you’re unable to get through.
In the end, a cached version of a page will only get you so far. You’re not going to be able to access the site like you could if it were up. But, if you’re simply looking for an old post and need to access it right away, searching the internet’s biggest caches can help you out.
Originally Posted in LifeHacker.
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