It some times shows up where it shouldn't, but much more often it saved me from tedious searches. This includes cases where a website was broken, gone or simply had a temporary downtime.

5 Stars

This WayBackMachine extension is nearly mandatory on the modern web. There are so many pages nowadays that have disappeared or changed that I find myself constantly having to look up archived copies. This extension saves me the tedium of repeatedly copying a URL, going to archive.org, then pasting it into the search box.

There are some downsides, but this is such a needed feature that I have to give it five stars.

Downside 1: this extension adds yet another button to my already cluttered toolbar. I'd much rather that it showed up in the context menu (right click) and could be bound to keyboard shortcuts.

Suggestion: Perhaps the next version could implement both interfaces, but allow either to be disabled in the preferences.

Downside 2: this only checks archive.org. While that is my preferred site, other extensions also have the ability to check cached versions from Google, Coral, and other search engines.

Downside 3a: While this extension's ability to automatically detect 404 (not found) errors is a nice feature, it doesn't seem to work everywhere (try youtube.com/thisurlreturns404).

Downside 3b: Even worse, some websites don't like returning 404, and instead return 301 (moved permanently) or 302 (redirect). For example, try ebay.com/notfound, which redirects the URL to pages.ebay.com/messages/page_not_found.html?abigbunchofgarbage and then returns 200 (success). On a site like that, if you then click WaybackMachine → Recent Version, you'll either be told "URL not found in wayback archives" or be shown an archived copy of the wrong page.

Suggestion: Perhaps a future version of this extension could make note of redirections and, when the WayBackMachine is used, the requested URLs would be tried in FIFO order (until one of them succeeds or they all fail).

Downside 4: If the lookup at archive.org fails, an error dialog will pop up with an annoying alert sound.

It works great but it really shouldn't prompt me to redirect on localhost.

Awesome to see the evolution of a brand as depicted on their site over time

A quite lovely addon. Not only does it help you find things that might have gotten lost (sites remove stuff, or shuffle it around, or edit them, or the sites just die), but it gives you a one-click way to archive whatever website you're visiting. Saves time and sanity.

I really wish it wouldn't pay attention to localhost. When I'm playing with my own web server I don't want to be forwarded to the wayback page. I'd rather be able to reload the classic error page instead of navigating to localhost again.

I am often digging around obscure websites and regularly run into 404's and even websites with expired domains. This addon helps automate an essential part of my research workflow.

Mr. Kahle this is add-on you designed HAS got to be at least one of your "pride & joys" technologically. I am looking forward to reviewing other add-on(s) that you kindly offer to share.

Thanks for helping me find what I was unable to prior.
MommaWolf

This was my favorite Test Pilot experiment so far. It's very helpful to have an easy way to pull up cached content when a site is down.

When you get a 404 and the page can't be found it looks to see if it can find one. Super hand.

Really buggy since a year ago. Shows the notice e.g. when simply navigation back and forth as others have mentioned.

Works very good and saves a lot of time by showing missing content!