See a page that no longer exists.
A link that worked last month now shows "404 Not Found", or the whole site is gone. The page may still be out there. Here is where to look, in the order most likely to work.
Guides
By Sharier, founder of DefyRot
Updated October 21, 2026
The quick answer
Paste the page's address into the Wayback Machine at web.archive.org and open the latest capture from before the page broke. If it is not there, search archive.ph, look for the page's new address on the same site, or ask the author. Google's cache no longer exists. To avoid this next time, keep your own copy of pages you rely on while they are still online.
First, check it is really gone
- Reload the page, and try again later: the site may simply be down.
- Remove everything after a
?or#in the address, then go up one level (delete the last part of the path). - Search the site for the title, or search the web for the exact title in quotes. Pages are often moved, not deleted.
Look it up in the Wayback Machine
Go to web.archive.org and paste the full address. If the page was ever captured, a calendar shows each saved date; pick the latest one before it broke. You can also put web.archive.org/web/*/ in front of the address to list every capture.
Try archive.today
At archive.ph, search for the address. It holds snapshots people saved by hand, so it sometimes has pages the Wayback Machine missed.
Why Google's cache no longer helps
Google used to keep a cached copy of most pages. It removed the cached links from search results in early 2024 and turned off the cache: search operator in September 2024, so archives are now the main way to see a deleted page.
Ask the source
If no archive has it, write to the author or the site owner. People often still have the text, or know where it moved.
Why do links stop working?
Pages are deleted, moved without a redirect, put behind a paywall or a login, or the whole domain lapses. This is called link rot, and it is common: Pew Research found that 23% of news pages and 21% of government pages contain at least one broken link.
Never lose a page you rely on again
Archives only help if someone saved the page before it went. The sure way is to keep your own copy when you first read it. DefyRot saves a clean copy of each page in your browser with one keypress, and when a saved link later breaks (404, 410 or a domain that no longer exists), it opens your copy instead.