Tips for Locating Web Sites That Have Moved

As many of you are likely aware, a big group of USGenWeb sites formerly hosted on RootsWeb.com have moved in recent months to new servers. While most of these transitions went smoothly, it is inevitable that many links and bookmarks ended up broken along the way. In particular, I've had problems locating files located on the USGenWeb Archives. Of course, these aren't the only genealogy sites to turn up a 404 page when you click on a bookmark or a search result in Google. Genealogy sites are moved or shut down every day - which can be darn frustrating when you suspect the page may have held information on your ancestor!

So how do you find these missing genealogy sites? Here are a few tricks that I use:

1. Shorten the URL back to the main site or first subdirectory. Many times when the subpages of a site don't work it is because the site has changed its directory structure. If you can get back to the home page of the Web site you may be able to search or browse your way back to the page you were looking for. This trick only works if the main site hasn't moved to a new URL without leaving a forwarding address.

2. Search for the file name (this works especially well if the file name is somewhat unique) and a keyword or too. The file name is the last part of the URL with a .htm, .html, .asp or other extension.

If all else fails, then try looking for a cached version of the site. A cache is a "snapshot" of the page taken at a particular point in the past. Even if the page is no longer live, you may be able to view the page as it previously existed. The cached version may not include photos or graphics, and will not always have working links - but at least you can get to the text content of the page. Two options for retrieving cached pages of Web sites include:

1. If the page has been online recently, then Google usually offers the most recent cached version. Search for the site in Google and then click on the "cached" link under the page description.

2. For sites that have been missing for months or perhaps years, then the Wayback Internet Archive is probably your best bet. This site has cached versions of pages going back for many years. If one of the cached versions doesn't work, then try another one.

As an example (sorry to single you out!), the page for Berrien County, Michigan cemeteries in the MIGenWeb Archives still has an old page that comes up broken in Google search results. In other words, the old page is not redirecting to the new one. When you follow a link to the old page on RootsWeb, you receive a "We're sorry. The page you tried is not available" message.

To locate the new page, you can try several things:

• If you're familiar with the USGenWeb Archives system, then you'll know that this sub-site is part of the larger USGenWeb Archives system. A search for USGenWeb Archives in Google still brings up the old site high on the list, but by visiting this page you are given the link to the new Web address at usgwarchives.org. From there you can browse down to Michigan Table of Contents page -> Michigan Counties Table of Contents -> Berrien -> Cemeteries to find the new page.

• Even if you weren't previously familiar with the USGenWeb Archives project, you can follow the same path by using the "shorten the URL" trick. Shorten it one directory level at a time until you get back to the main USGenWeb Archives page - which doesn't redirect, but does give you a link to the new location of the Web site.

• Another way you can locate the new site is to use the file name search trick. Search Google for "1101cem.htm" (the file name located at the end of the URL) and "berrien" to locate the new page. This trick only works if the new Web site has been around long enough to have been indexed by Google. In this case it has. In my test the new page for USGenWeb Archives - Berrien County Cemeteries came up second in the search results.

• Because this site only moved a few months ago, the cached link on Google still works for the moment, but not all of the links from the cached page work because they, too, have moved. The next step is to visit the Internet Archive, which has cached versions of the site from 2007 back to 2001.

The main theme here is persistance. Most broken links and moved or removed Web sites can be found with a little time and patience!