The web that vanished

The assistant read the oldest capture of the home page, summarised thirty years of captures of two GeoCities addresses in one call each, listed each change of content of 2009, compared the two versions either side of a change in April, and read the last ones. Each section below names the tools that made it; all 7 calls, in order, with what each returned, are in the receipts at the end.

The oldest capture of www.geocities.com is from 22 October 1996, 17:32 GMT. Its title: “Welcome to GeoCities Home Page”. Among its first lines: “Free Home Pages & Free Member Email”. In 1996, 1997 and 1998 every capture of that address was the page itself (status 200); the first redirects came in 1999.

From here the story follows geocities.yahoo.com. We take it as GeoCities' front page after the redirects began because its own captures are a GeoCities home page (the 2009 titles begin “Yahoo! GeoCities”); the capture index records that www.geocities.com redirected, not where to.

Quotes from GeoCities and Yahoo pages are kept to short phrases: the pages are under copyright.

geocities.yahoo.com answered with its page in 2000 to 2009, and in a few captures since; in every year from 2010 on, nearly every capture was a redirect. The capture index records that a redirect happened, not where it led.

Listing 2009's captures of the page, skipping each capture whose content repeated the one before, left 116: one for every change. Between the capture of 21 April 2009 and the next change, 23 April 2009, the sign-up offer gave way to a notice. Here are the parts that changed, with a line of context each side, as the page read before and after. The pages are under copyright, so headings and lines of up to eight words are shown as they were, and longer lines only by their length.

On 26 October 2009 at 19:21 GMT the page still carried the notice. The next day, at 20:48 GMT, the Wayback Machine captured a Yahoo! “page not found” at the same address, and its last capture of 2009, at 22:55 GMT on 27 October 2009, was a 301 redirect. The last 200 in the list is from 27 October 2009, 20:48 GMT.

All 7 calls of the run, in the order they were made, with what each returned. Open one to see when it was taken and which sections it made; press Play to watch them arrive.

Captures: www.geocities.com, 1996 · 21 April 2009 · 23 April 2009 · 26 October 2009 · 27 October 2009. The pages are © GeoCities and Yahoo!; only titles and short phrases are quoted. Capture counts grow as the Wayback Machine keeps capturing; these are from 1 November 2026 (UTC).