Can anyone help?

[Barry Shnikov]

I am vaguely aware that simply because a web site has been taken offline, it is not necessarily lost as there are places where obsolete web pages can still be accessed. I realise that's vague but there have been times where people have written online 'so and so has taken his web site down but you can still find the pages at xxx.com'

I have a miscreant who is denying my client's assertions about a franchise, and I suspect he may have had a web page dealing with that 'market opportunity'. It's long gone now.

Is anyone able to help me out with where one looks for these things, or how, or from whom?

[Gav]

You could try the wayback machine at www.archive.org

[straycat]

The easiest way, if one is lucky, is to search for the site on Google. Sometimes you can find it, even though it's been taken down, and click on the 'Cached' link (assuming one exists) - you'll then be able to see some form of the site, although the chances are that much of it won't work.

There are probably other ways, but I don't know 'em.

[ducasi]

Alternatively, try searching for it in google, and seeing if there is a "cached" version available...

Edit: straycat beat me to it.

[Dreadful Scathe]

yes - wayback machine and google cache is what i would have said...

shot in the dark if its an old site, as the host may have changed or the domain has expired, but : if its a domain that still exists and you can see where the website is hosted (dns entries)- then you know who to approach legally to ask for their own backups of the pages, if they still have them. Don't know how easy that is though