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TL;DR: We built a tool that compares your archived URLs against your live site to find content that disappeared. Here’s what we found on Morgan & Morgan’s website — and how you can run the same check on yours.
The Problem with the Wayback Machine
The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine is incredible. Billions of pages. Decades of history. Completely free.
But using it is painful:
- Manual clicking — One URL at a time, calendar clicking for each snapshot
- No bulk operations — Want to check 100 URLs? That’s 100 manual searches
- No comparison — Seeing what changed means opening two tabs and eyeballing it
For SEO professionals, this is a problem. We need to find what content used to exist, what URLs still have backlinks pointing to 404s, and what competitors removed.
So we built a bulk checker.
The Demo: Morgan & Morgan
We ran our tool on forthepeople.com — Morgan & Morgan, one of the largest personal injury law firms in the US.
Input: 75 archived URLs from the Wayback Machine
Time: 30 seconds
Result: 15 pages that used to exist but now return 404
What We Found
| Lost Content | Last Archived |
|---|---|
| $88 million auto accident verdict announcement | 2012 |
| $90 million tobacco verdict (PDF) | 2011 |
| FAMU band hazing case coverage | 2012 |
| 15 million defective cribs recall article | 2010 |
| Seroquel lawsuits update | 2009 |
| JaxPort corruption trial coverage | 2011 |
| 10+ local legal news stories | 2009-2012 |
Each of these URLs now returns a 404. The content is gone from their site — but still viewable in the Wayback Machine.
Why This Matters for SEO
- Lost social proof — Case results and verdict announcements build trust
- Potential link equity leak — If backlinks still point to these URLs, that authority is going nowhere
- Content opportunities — This content could be republished, updated, or 301’d
The Next Step: Check Your Backlinks
Finding the 404s is step one. Step two is checking if any of those URLs still have backlinks pointing to them.
If a page has inbound links but returns 404, you’re losing link equity. The fix:
- 301 redirect to a relevant page
- Republish the content (Wayback has it archived)
- Reach out to linking sites to update the URL
Use your preferred backlink tool (Ahrefs, Moz, Semrush) to check the lost URLs.
Try It On Your Site
Want to find lost content on your own domain?
Enter your domain, we’ll scan the Wayback Machine and check which archived URLs now 404.
How It Works
- Query the Wayback Machine’s CDX API for all archived URLs on your domain
- Check each URL against your live site
- Flag anything returning 404, 410, or 5xx
- Provide Wayback links to view the original content
No API keys needed. Built on the public Wayback Machine API.
Built by SEO Bandwagon — SEO tools and services for businesses that want to rank.
