Now Google search engine will show you very old pages, and this is why
When you search the internet, whether on Google or any other platform, you usually want to get the latest results. There are millions of websites out there and in many cases they are outdated. However, Google will now start showing old websites in its results. We will explain how this will happen and why. This may interest some users, but it may also be useless for others.
But how will they display these results from old sites? To do this, they will use the Wayback Machine , a platform that allows you to see what a website looked like a few years ago. Basically, it stores screenshots of those sites, as they were at a certain time. Now, Google will show this in its results.
The idea is that if Google interprets an old result as relevant to your search, it will show it. Basically, it will be a link to the Wayback Machine, also known as the Internet Archive, where you can see that content, of a particular page, as it was at another time. It could be an article from 15 years ago, for example. It could also be that the site no longer exists or has changed a lot.
Logically, whether or not something from the Wayback Machine will show up will depend on the reputation of that website, as well as how relevant what it offers is. If it fits what the user is searching for, it will likely show up, just like any other search. Old results won’t necessarily show up, because it will depend on whether or not that site has been archived.
There are popular pages that have thousands of screenshots on the Wayback Machine. Other, newer, less popular articles will have far fewer. So the likelihood of you finding relevant, older results from a particular site will be related to what we've said.
This innovation is now rolling out, as explained on the Wayback Machine website. They note that once it reaches all users, the way to see these results is simple. Just do a regular search and then go to the three dots that appear next to that search, select More about this page and see the Wayback Machine link to this website.
This platform is over 25 years old, so there are many websites registered on it. You will be able to see what the page looked like many years ago. For example, you can see what the Houhou Informatics blog looked like at the beginning and how it has changed in recent years. The same is true for any other website.
In short, now with Google you can search for content archived on the Wayback Machine. It can be useful in certain situations. However, it is still just another option offered by the popular search engine.