_ __ __ _
(_)__ / /_________ / /________ _______(_)
/ / _ \/ __/ ___/ _ \/ __/ ___/ / / / ___/ /
/ / __/ /_(__ ) __/ /_/ / / /_/ / / / /
__/ /\___/\__/____/\___/\__/_/ \__,_/_/ /_/
/___/
(Originally posted to Cohost on Thu, May 30, 2024, 11:59 PM)
Old'aVista is a search engine created by The Eric Experiment, with a design heavily influenced by 1999 AltaVista.
It uses the Wayback Machine for its results, but unlike the plain Wayback Machine, it has a full-text search index, allowing you to search the content of older websites for once, and it works on older browsers, redirecting to TheOldNet whenever possible.
If you like Old'aVista, I recommend you also look into:
TheOldNet: notable for bringing the Wayback Machine to older browsers, including a period-accurate proxy.
ProtoWeb: unlike the Wayback Machine, it avoids dead links as much as possible (at the cost of having less websites) by focusing on a "functional" snapshot of the early web. Through the proxy, you can use a replica of Google or Yahoo to search for older sites, most of which are personal homepages from Geocities or the like.
FrogFind: a search engine and proxy that uses Mozilla's "Readability" library to turn many modern sites into plain text and heavily-compressed images for older browsers to digest.
Marginalia and Ichido: modern search engines that work closer to classic search engines, and prioritize text-heavy websites with options to customize your results. It's great for serendipity, or for taking a break from search engines that don't respect your queries.