# Website history checker | Domain history · Vaneform

Check website history with Internet Archive homepage snapshots and compare it with the registration date recorded in Vaneform.

## What the website history checker shows

- The earliest and latest sampled homepage captures in the Internet Archive.
- How many months have captures, and every gap longer than 13 months.
- The registration date Vaneform has for the domain, so you can see archive records that predate it.
- Direct links to each capture on the Wayback Machine.

## Example: google.com

The google.com report records a registration date of 1997-09-15. The earliest homepage capture in the Internet Archive is from 1998-11-11 (checked 2026-10-07), about 14 months later, and captures continue from there.

For a domain you plan to buy, the same check shows whether the name had an earlier owner: captures before the current registration date, or a long gap followed by different content, are worth opening.

## Questions

### How far back does domain history go?

As far as the Internet Archive kept homepage captures, which for older sites starts in the late 1990s. Sites the archive rarely visited have fewer captures.

### What does a capture gap mean?

A gap is a period with no saved homepage capture. It can mark a parked or expired domain, a blocked crawler or simply low archive coverage; open the captures on either side to compare.

### Is the website history checker free?

Yes. Requests are rate limited and depend on Internet Archive availability; successful results are cached for 7 days.

## Related tools and guides

- [Website traffic checker](https://vaneform.com/)
- [Domain registration lookup](https://vaneform.com/registration)
- [.si domain checker](https://vaneform.com/si-domain)
- [How Vaneform estimates website traffic](https://vaneform.com/methodology)
- [Check website history with evidence](https://vaneform.com/guides/check-website-history)

Canonical: https://vaneform.com/history