They used existing archives; the pages were actually archived earlier. But they could only incorporate the pages that had actually been archived, which was mostly major services (Geocities, ProHosting, Lycos, etc) and public institutions.
That makes sense, from why some things were captured more than others and from the pov of starting an archive service - using what’s already been done and going from there. So things that weren’t part of such a network and didn’t rank high in existing search engines really didn’t have a chance.
They used existing archives; the pages were actually archived earlier. But they could only incorporate the pages that had actually been archived, which was mostly major services (Geocities, ProHosting, Lycos, etc) and public institutions.
That makes sense, from why some things were captured more than others and from the pov of starting an archive service - using what’s already been done and going from there. So things that weren’t part of such a network and didn’t rank high in existing search engines really didn’t have a chance.