How to link to an archived website

An archived website’s index or timeline page shows all available snapshots of its pages or resources in the web archive. The links in the timeline page are permanent and will not change.

To check whether we have archived a site or to get an index link to use, type https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/timeline/ immediately before the original URL, like this:

https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/timeline/https://fco.gov.uk/en/about-the-fco/history-and-buildings/

If this link format doesn’t work, then it is likely we have not archived this site yet.

Once you have opened the index link, you can see all dated snapshots for that website in our archive. Each snapshot has its own unique link.

Each dated snapshot is presented in a YYYYMMDDHHMMSS datestamp format: so in the example below, you can see that the snapshot was taken on 4 May 2009 at 17:46:59 precisely.

https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20090504174659/https://fco.gov.uk/en/about-the-fco/history-and-buildings/

When linking to an archived website snapshot from a live website, please state clearly that the site has been archived by The National Archives and is available through the UK Government Web Archive.