What are the Oldest Websites Still Online and Archived?
Some websites have outlived browsers, hosting companies, and even the people who created them. These digital fossils, often static HTML, blinking text and all, have been online for decades. Many are still active, while others only survive thanks to archive.org.
Let’s look at how to find these oldest websites, what you can learn from them, and why they still matter.
Start by Exploring Known Web Pioneers
Some of the earliest websites are still online, though many have changed addresses or designs over time. A few examples:
CERN’s original website (the very first one, 1991)
ACME Laboratories (online since 1994)
Space Jam (1996 site) - preserved on purpose
These sites serve no commercial purpose now, but remain online as part of internet history. They’re examples of when the web was built for exploration, not monetization.
Use Archive.org to Trace Their History
Even if an old site is still online, it’s likely that only archive.org shows how it looked in its earliest form.
To view the original versions:
Go to https://archive.org/web
Enter the domain
Select the earliest snapshot on the timeline
You'll often find bare-bones HTML, inline styles, and pixel fonts, but also long-lost links, credits, and forgotten side projects.
Want to see how many years a domain has been archived? Try the Wayback Domain Scanner - it shows all captured URLs, year by year.
What Makes a Website “Old”?
It’s not just about domain age. Consider a site "historically old" if:
The content hasn’t changed significantly since the 90s or early 2000s
It’s still hosted on its original domain
The HTML and design are preserved as they were
It was archived early (pre-2000 snapshots exist)
Some websites may have changed ownership or content direction over the years - you can confirm this using Smartial’s Domain Auditor, which flags major shifts and suspicious changes across time.
Why These Sites Still Matter
The oldest websites are useful for:
Web design students studying early layout patterns
Researchers analyzing online culture or early blogging
Writers and developers referencing early internet language
Digital archaeologists exploring web history
They also show the contrast between what the internet was - lightweight, slow, human - and what it’s become.
If you’re comparing how brands looked over time, try reviewing old versions of company pages. For example, Space Jam (1996) vs. a modern ecommerce homepage says a lot about how web evolution mirrors real-world design trends.
How to Find More Old Sites
There’s no master list, but you can:
Search for domains registered before 1998 (use WHOIS history tools)
Look at archive.org’s earliest crawls (try 1996–1998)
Search for
.eduor.govsites still hosted in original formVisit retro web communities like 404PageFound, Neocities, or even Reddit threads about “oldest websites still online”
You can also use Smartial’s Expired Domain Comparator to find domains with a long archival footprint many of which have quietly existed since the early web era.
What You Can Learn by Exploring These Sites
Aside from nostalgic joy, older sites reveal:
How navigation and UI used to work
Which content formats survived (and which didn’t)
Which technologies became obsolete (frames, Flash, counters)
Early examples of SEO (keyword stuffing in titles, anyone?)
Simpler privacy policies or none at all
You’ll also notice how personal websites used to be, no tracking, no third-party scripts, just hand-coded HTML and a contact email.
Should You Build or Preserve a Website Like This?
If you're maintaining a personal or legacy site, keeping it simple and fast can actually be a benefit. Search engines and accessibility tools still love lightweight HTML.
Preserving an old site, or even restoring one from the past, can be done with tools like Publii or WordPress. If you're rebuilding from archive.org, see how to export content into modern platforms without breaking what made it special.
The oldest websites still online and their snapshots in the Wayback Machine, are more than just curiosities. They’re digital landmarks. They tell us what the web used to be, how far we’ve come, and what we’ve lost along the way.
Whether you’re studying, restoring, or just exploring, the tools on Smartial.net can help you find, compare, and extract these relics before they fade away.