Of course, once text search is here, it will be IN-CREDIBLE as a research tool.

Are there any news/updates, or even an ETA, for text search?

Many thanks.
Mark

I am a novice user of the Way Back Machine – but am currently using it to support some work I’m doing. I have a few questions.. (if possible please can you explain in layman terms – I’m a bit of a luddite..!)

1. I know you have a FAQ on the difference between the classic wayback machine and the beta version – but I’d like to understand why they provide different results for the same year. For example, the site I am looking at, the old version of the machine provides 23 “pages” for the eyar 2007. The new version provides “18 crawls” for the year 2007. Do pages and crawls mean the same thing (ie – the date at which a copy of the site was captured?) And are the results slightly different because two different crawlers have been used?

2. I get that the reason why the two versions will give different results after 2008 may be because the old site hasn’t been updated since 2008. What I don’t get is what it means to update the site. Does it only mean that later dates, ie. dates after the previous last date available, are added? Or can more dates be added within a year for which there were already dates captured. For example, is it possible that when the wayback machine is updated, a new capture could be added for, say, June 2002?

3. Is there any particular reason why the classic wayback machine has 37 captures for the site for 2008, and nothing after 22 August 2008, but the Beta version only has 2 results for 2009 (jan and feb)?. Is this likely to be because it’s not been updated, or because the site hasn’t been crawled since early 2009?

4. When I access the Beta version of the site, I can only do it by running it through the old version, then accessing the test version through the results page (where it says try the new updated version etc etc). When I put the URL in the search box on the home page of the Beta version, I get nothing. Am I potentially missing anything by only being able to access it this way? ie. If I were able to search through the Beta site itself would I get any different results?

Many thanks for any help!

To see each of the steps is easiest using a web protocol/developer tool such as ‘Firebug’ (in Firefox) or the developer consoles available in other browsers.

In this case, my guess is that a bit of original Javascript was designed to prevent older pages from being redisplayed/framed elsewhere. When it runs, it tries to bounce the browser to the new homepage, with an automatic extension based on the starting address. This results in a unique new URL which the Wayback does not have – in which case we fall back to making a fresh fetch this very moment (for the future archive) and showing that.

You might have some success viewing individual older pages without being bounced elsewhere by turning off Javascript in your browser, but note that this also disables much Wayback navigation functionality.

http://waybackmachine.org/200906-200909*/http://www.djsportal.com/*

Unfortunately I can’t in general tell why a certain site may not have been collected, or collected as thoroughly, in a prior period. There did not appear to be a robots.txt block in place, but other issues (either on the site or with the crawling operations prioritization and resources) may have prevented better collection. While we do still have some past material to catch up on indexing, I don’t think it comes from that era. So while it’s not impossible a few more results could appear, it’s not likely. I’m sorry we don’t have better coverage of your site.

This problem persists with the beta version, too.

How to get results of your WAYBACK machine for my website [URL] ? I’m looking particulary for june 30 – september 30 2009 – BUT NOT VISIBLE.

Last I can see are:
Aug 22, 2008

Yahu Pawul
editor for [URL]