What Happens When Someone Removes His Web Page?
The Internet is a complex network consisting of millions, if not billions, of web pages. Just as often as pages go up, others come down and are removed. The information that created that website, however, is not necessarily lost. There are several places the information can still be found.
Other People Are Reading
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The Internet
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The Internet is little more than a vast network of host computers that connect to and transfer information from one another. When a home or office computer connects to the Internet, it is actually requesting the host computer for information about a particular website.
Website's Residence
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Web pages are stored as collections of information, pictures, audio and video in a folder on a host computer or server. This information is transferred between host computers for the end-user to view on his screen.
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Website is Removed
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When a web page is taken down, or goes offline, one of several things may have happened: the server might be down, the site is overloaded with visitors or the web page was actually removed from the hosting server. Usually, the latter is the case and a "404 Error" page is displayed instead of the actual site.
Website Information after it has been Removed
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The actual location of the web page's information can vary, depending on the reason a web page was taken offline. In some cases, the file was simply misplaced on the server or the address was typed incorrectly. Many times, the site's owner either moves the page to a different address or can no longer support the site and takes it down for financial or personal reasons. In most instances, the site itself still remains on the host server until replaced by other information or still exists on the original creator's computer where the site was first put together. Unfortunately, in these cases, the web page remains unavailable to the general public.
Website Might Still Be Available
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There are several places online that specialize in taking "snapshots" of the Internet on a regular basis. Google, for example, does this for search purposes. Next time you search for something in Google, you will find the option to visit a "cached" page instead of the actual page just below each search result.
One option for viewing web pages that no longer exist is the Wayback Machine, or Internet Archive. This web page is the front-end of an enormous database that has recorded almost all of the Internet with dates ranging back to almost 15 years ago (see link in Resources).
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