What is the Vanishing Web?   How Can I Search it?

cartoon: rabit ears disappear in a top hat, a comment on the vanishing web... going, going, gone.

 

Gone, but not forgotten!

Have ever returned to a favorite site, only to discover the dreaded 404 page not found error message? Have you ever clicked through a Google result to find the page missing or altered since it was last indexed?

The web is changing all of the time; pages are added or removed everyday.   Top websites are regularly overhauled.   Some sites move to new addresses or are taken down when their webmasters find other interests.   Millions of pages of information are vanishing from the web every day.

This lost content can be thought of as the Vanishing Web. Once a page disappears is it really gone?   Is it possible to find something that is no longer on the net? Web pages that vanish are gone but not quite forgotten.   There are steps you can take to retrieve those missing pages.  

We'll look at three strategies that might save your day by pulling the missing rabbit from the proverbial hat:

Cartoon Image of a computer reading from paper text. Listen

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Authored by Dennis O'Connor 2003