Is this possible? There are millions of Dead pages, broken links across the internet. Some of them were extremely useful also. Because of some reason many of the good and useful web pages has been removed from the internet or changed the location without proper redirect. This results in dead pages and broken links.
But is there any possibility of getting them from somewhere? There are many different services which collect portions of the World Wide Web and ensuring the collection is preserved in an archive. The largest web archiving organization is the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) which excels to maintain an archive of the entire Web. Sometimes it is also referred as the Wayback Machine. Internet Archive is a member of IIPC (International Internet Preservation Consortium).
There are many other services which archive websites and other internet resources. Some of the big names include Gigablast, WebCite etc.
The major search engines including Google, Bing and Yahoo also caches archives of web pages and websites. Google Cache, Yahoo! Cache and MSN Cache are examples.
How to Resurrect Dead Pages and Broken links
If one website is at least few months old, then there is a great chance of getting at least some of the pages back from any of these archives. But how do we access them?
Using Search Engine Cache
When you search the title of a dead URL you may see the cached page in search results. Especially the Google search result. If you are lucky then you may get the cached page from the search engine cache.
Resurrect Pages Firefox Add-on
Resurrect Pages is a nice tool to search and find archives of dead pages and broken links. 
The Firefox addon searches through five big page cache/mirrors:
- CoralCDN
- Google Cache
- Yahoo! Cache
- The Internet Archive
- MSN Cache
- Gigablast
- WebCite
This is an excellent tool and can be used to find traces of dead pages. There is a great chance that you will find one cached version of the age you are looking for.These archives and caches can also be used to find an older version of a website or web pages.
Binu George , the author of Globinch.com, is a technology blogger and software architect. You can follow him on Twitter, Google+, Facebook.
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