How to Find a Website You Visited Months Ago

Start with your browser history, and search it for a word from the page's title or web address:

• Chrome: press Ctrl+H (Windows) or Cmd+Y (Mac) and type in the search box. Chrome's History page goes back 90 days.
• Safari: choose History → Show All History and search the list.
• Firefox: open the ☰ menu, then History → Manage History, and search the list.

If it was longer ago than your browser keeps, or on another device, there are other places to look. They're below, roughly in the order most likely to work.

Search your browser history for a page you visited

Standard history search looks at the page title and the web address, not the text of the article. So search for words a title or address would contain:

• The site's name, if you remember it ("substack", "nytimes", "medium").
• One unusual word from the headline rather than the general topic.
• The author's name, since many sites put it in the title.

If you remember roughly when you read it, scroll that week of your history instead of searching.

Chrome also has a setting called History search, powered by AI (Settings → AI Innovations) that lets you describe a page in plain words. It needs Chrome in English in the US, and it only covers pages you visit after you turn it on.

Find websites older than 90 days in your Google Account

If you use Chrome signed in with history sync on, and the box to include Chrome history is checked under Web & App Activity, your Google Account may have a copy. Go to myactivity.google.com, search for a word and filter by date. How far back it goes depends on your auto-delete setting (3, 18 or 36 months, or never).

Deleting Chrome's history and deleting My Activity are separate, so one may still have what the other lost.

Check where you might have shared or saved the link

A lot of what we read reaches us through someone else, or we pass it on. Search:

• Your email. Newsletters are a common source. Search your inbox for the topic or the sender.
• Chats and messages. A link you sent to a friend or a work channel is still there, with the date.
• Bookmarks and read-later apps. Bookmarks have their own search in every browser.
• Social apps. If you found it on LinkedIn, X or Facebook, check your saved items or likes there.

Search the web again with Google search operators

If you remember what the article said but not where it was, Google's search operators narrow things down:

• Exact phrase: put a phrase in quotes, like "willingness to pay" interviews.
• One site: site:substack.com index fund fees searches only that site.
• A date range: after:2026-03-01 before:2026-06-01 keeps results dated in that window.
• Leave words out: -course drops results you know are wrong.

You can combine them: site:medium.com "transformer" after:2026-01-01.

If the page no longer exists

Sites change their addresses and remove posts. If you find the link but it won't open, paste it into the Wayback Machine, which often has a saved copy of public pages.

Why it's hard to find an article you read months ago

Take an engineer who follows AI for work and personal investing on weekends, through articles and YouTube talks. In April she reads a long post comparing index fund fees. She doesn't save it. In October she's moving her retirement account and wants the post's point about expense ratios. She can explain the point, but she can't name the title, the site or the month, and April is past Chrome's 90 days.

History looks for words in the title and address, and Google looks for words on the page. She's searching with the idea and the reason it mattered to her, so the two don't meet.

What helps is a small step while reading: save the page and write one line in your own words on why it matters. It doesn't need to be polished. "Check expense ratio before moving the IRA" is enough, and it's close to what she'd type in October. (She's a made-up example, not a customer story.)

Save it now, so you can find it next time

If one of the steps above found your page, save it before you close the tab, with a line on why you were looking for it.

In Linko, saving works from wherever you read:

• On a computer: in Chrome, Edge, Brave and other Chromium browsers, the Linko browser extension saves the page you're on, and you can write your line before you click Save. Firefox and Safari can't run the extension yet; there, paste the link into Linko.
• On a phone: share the link to Linko from any app that can share a link. See Save links from your phone and your browser.

There's no folder to pick. Linko files each page and note into a topic when one fits.

Back to October, with the April post saved in Linko. She types "expense ratio" into Search, and the post comes up with her line on it. If nothing matched the words she typed, Linko would look for notes with the same meaning. She opens the original and checks the number before she moves the account. On the note's page, Related notes and Related resources list what Linko finds connected, such as a talk on fund fees she saved from YouTube. See Find an idea you half remember.

She can also ask, "What did I save about index fund fees?" Ask Linko answers from her notes and saved pages and lists them under Cited, so she can open the original. If you mostly use a read-later app today, our read-later apps vs. Linko comparison covers the difference.

FAQ

How do I find a website I visited recently?

Open your browser history (Ctrl+H in Chrome on Windows, Cmd+Y on a Mac) and search for a word from the title or the site's name. For pages from the last few days, scrolling the list is often faster.

Can I find a website I visited in incognito or private mode?

Not in your history, because private browsing doesn't save it. Email, messages and Google search operators can still help.

Why can't I find a page I know I visited?

You may have used another device, profile or private window, or it may be older than your browser keeps. If you use Chrome with sync, check My Activity.

How do I keep track of articles I want to read again?

Save them somewhere searchable while you read, with one line on why the article matters to you.

Try it with your next article

The next time you read something you might want again, save it and write one line on why, in words you'd search for later.

Start saving with Linko →