Today, a tremendous amount of your organization’s client communications are happening through the representations on your website and social media channels. If you’re subject to regulatory compliance requirements or are involved in potential litigation, then you’re obligated to preserve your online content. It’s simply the only way to demonstrate to a court or a regulatory body exactly what you said to a prospective client.
But it’s called “the web” for a reason: everything on the internet is intricately and extensively interconnected. Every site—even the plain-Jane main landing page for a Google search—has links to other content. Those connections may be as simple as a “contact us” bar at the bottom of the page or as complex as hundreds of links to related internal and external content.
We’ve all fallen down internet rabbit trails at some point, where you start out checking your online bank balance but then click on a tempting link. That link leads to another, then another, and the next thing you know, an hour has passed. The internet is infinite, not to mention infinitely distracting—but the majority of website preservation tools are missing out on most of what’s there.
If your website archiving method is only capturing the front page of your website or only capturing specific enumerated pages within your site, you’re not getting the valuable context that surrounds your content. And the context of your company is what tells your story, interpreting and explaining your messaging.
The solution is simple, but it’s far from easy: you need to capture not just a page but also every page that page links to. These links are what we at Hanzo call “hops.”
