How to Track How a Company Website Has Changed Over Time
Patrick Bushe
September 1, 2024 · 5 min read
A company's website history shows how its products, prices, messaging and team have changed. The Wayback Machine covers the past, change-monitoring tools cover the future, and a few other public sources fill the gaps.
Look back with the Wayback Machine
- Go to
web.archive.organd enter the company's address. - The calendar shows dates with saved copies. Pick a year, then a date.
- Click through to the pages that matter: pricing, product, about, team and careers.
Wayback Quick Access opens the archived history of the page you're on with one click, which is quicker when you're comparing many pages.
Compare two versions
The Wayback Machine's Changes tool highlights what differs between two captures of the same page: added text, removed text and edits. It's the quickest way to see, for example, how a pricing page changed between two dates.
What to look for
- Pricing: price changes, removed plans and new tiers.
- Positioning: how the headline and main message shifted, and which customers they target.
- Products: features added, renamed or dropped.
- Team and careers: leadership changes, and which roles they hire for, which hints at strategy.
- Claims and policies: terms of service, privacy policies and claims that were later removed.
Watch for future changes
Change-monitoring services such as Visualping and Distill.io check a page on a schedule and alert you when it changes. Use them on a competitor's pricing or product pages. Save Page Now in Wayback Quick Access also lets you archive a page yourself, so a dated copy exists before it changes.
Other sources of company history
- Ad libraries: Meta's Ad Library and Google's Ads Transparency Center show the ads a company runs now.
- Public filings: public companies' reports, such as US SEC filings, describe the business year by year.
- Old job postings and press releases, which often survive in archives.
- Social media history and old app store listings.
Keep notes as you go
Record what changed, the date and the archive link. A simple spreadsheet works, and Sticky Notes Anywhere can hold notes on the pages themselves. For related research, see using web archives for domain due diligence and ecommerce competitive research.
