Broken link? Look for an archived version.
Some uses for the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine:
When you come across a broken link, check for an archived copy
To see what a website looked like at a specific point in time
Web archives (e.g. Internet Archive) can be helpful for researching recent histories, since you can see what particular websites looked like at different points in time.
Some caveats: Not all websites end up included in the Internet Archive, and the archived versions of sites don’t always fully reflect the original version (e.g. interactive elements don't always display).
For example, Narmada.org is relatively well-covered. There are two main ‘views’ available:
Shows when the website was crawled. Allows easy navigation by date.
One way to start: Choose two dates, explore the (archived version of the) site as of each date, and compare what you find.
Visually represents particular named sections of the site (e.g. press releases, blog posts, about) and how many pages were included in each.
Allows for navigating to particular sections by date, and some comparison between the size of sections over time.
One way to start: Identify a section (e.g. press releases).
Explore this section on a specific date: e.g. Narmada press releases as of August 3, 2002.
Compare to another date, e.g. March 10, 2005.
Web archive crawls follow URLs, and only go so many levels ‘deep’ into a site. That said, you may be able to find a seemingly-unavailable page crawled on a different day, since website creators/managers made changes to their sites at different points in time (re-arranging content, renaming, changing URLs).