How to Remove a Website From Internet Archive (Wayback Machine)

Some of you may be wondering how to remove your website from the Wayback Machine. Well, you don’t have to worry anymore because we got you!

In this article, we will teach you how to remove your old website from the Wayback Machine with easy steps. All you have to do is follow them and then you are all good!

What is Wayback Machine?

Before actually going into the ways on how to remove a website, let us first give a brief introduction about the Wayback Machine.

The Wayback Machine, only one component of the Internet Archive, was created to preserve website material that has been altered or deleted. 

Since its debut, it has grown to be one of the most well-known and recognizable websites. The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show’s fictitious time-traveling machine inspired Kahle and Gilliat to name their website after it.

The website now maintains archived web data on a cluster of Linux machines.

The Wayback Machine retrieves all publicly available data files and information from web pages through its crawling technique. 

However, not all material uploaded on a website is included here since some of it is password-protected or kept in inaccessible databases. Because of this, depending on how website developers constructed each individual site throughout time, certain websites are better crawled than others.

How to remove a website from the Wayback Machine?

Now let’s go to the part where we’ll actually teach you how to remove the website from the Wayback Machine:

1. To stop the Internet Archive, Wayback Machine, Archive.org Crawler, and Copyright Notice, update your website’s robots.txt file.

2. Create a DMCA Takedown Notice that includes precise URLs to the websites and pages you want to be deleted from the Internet Archive, Wayback Machine, and Archive.org.

3. Find an old invoice that shows the domain’s earliest date of possession.

4. Create and send a courteous email using 2. and 3. linked to the crawler for the Internet Archive, Wayback Machine, and Archive.org.

5. Wait for 3 to 5 days.

You can also try this template and send it to info@archive.org

Please take [MY URL] off the Wayback Machine’s list of websites. I’ve changed [MY URL]/robots.txt to say I don’t want this website archived.

[MY URL] refers to [HOSTING COMPANY] nameservers, as shown by https://lookup.icann.org, and I have an invoice from [HOSTING COMPANYmost ]’s recent billing cycle as proof that I am the owner of this domain.

Please let me know if more proof or action (such as a DMCA takedown notice) is needed.

Regards,

Your Name

After six days, you will receive an answer from them.

From: Office Manager (Internet Archive)

Hello,

The following has now been submitted for exclusion from the Wayback Machine at web.archive.org: [MY SITE]

Please allow up to a day for the automated portions of the process to run their course and for the changes to take effect.

– The Internet Archive Team

Other Suggestions:

• Only pages and websites from the time you obtained ownership will be removed by The Internet Archive, Wayback Machine, and Archive.org; not merely because you now own them. This is quite important. Therefore, if you buy an old domain, you can’t access anything from before the day you started ownership.
• No urgent procedure exists. There’s really much else we can add other than the fact that we understand your frustration if you need things completed quickly. Get legal counsel involved if there is a legal reason you need anything removed right away.
• This final piece of advice applies equally to everyone else. Maintain an updated robots.txt if you wish to permanently ban the Internet Archive, Wayback Machine, and Archive.org. Maintaining an updated robots.txt file and blocking Archive.org is far easier than having pages deleted.

Conclusion

You’ve reached the end of this article and we’re sure that you learned something new again. We’re also sure that we gave out the easiest techniques that you can follow, well it’s just an email, so I guess there’s nothing to worry about.

All you need is patience while waiting for their team to reply to you, and make sure that you’ve written your email well.

FAQ

How to remove a website from the site?

You can follow the steps we’ve given above, such as sending them an email or editing the robots.txt.If all else fails, try contacting the support team of the website and ask if they directly delete it from their system.

What happens when you save a page on Wayback Machine?

According to Archive.org, these saved pages can be cited, shared, and linked to–and they will continue to exist even after the original page changes or is removed from the web.