"[T]ools like Versionista are making it easier still to spot alteration over time." -- The Economist

"Beyond the gotcha value, there are other very useful applications for [Versionista]. You can use it to monitor prices on a product page. You can keep an eye on a competitor's site for changes relevant to your business, or for additions to their news page. -- CNET

"John McCain's campaign published a side-by-side comparison of Barack Obama's Iraq War policy web pages on Tuesday using a new automated online tracking service called Versionista." -- Wired

"Versionista helps to promote accountability by giving activists the ability to see when politicians have changed the language of their campaign promises and policy statements." -- ars technica

Versionista monitors Web sites that you specify for edits. Our Web-based service records every change, clearly highlighting added or deleted words and sentences.

You can view multiple generations of edit histories for every page on a site. At the same time, filtering eliminates information overload by tracking only content that matters.

Comprehensive competitive intelligence

Versionista was designed by PhDs for the rough-and-tumble world of today's Web.

  • Every site edit, version, and deletion is "set in stone" by Versionista on an hour-by-hour basis.

  • Precise historical mapping of a Web site's edits, including "scrubbing" of potentially compromising information, is a competitive advantage to journalists, campaigns, corporations, and activists.

  • Versionista gives a "big picture" visualization of the evolution of a site, particularly one that has multiple editors, bloggers, or outside contributors.

How it works

A side-by-side comparison and multiple other views let you see "before and after" versions of every monitored page. We highlight what text has been added, deleted, or moved. Versionista will keep up to 25 versions per page. You can "rollback" in time to see older versions.

Start tracking sites right now

Yep, you can track a few URLs for free, too.

But, to proceed, you must confirm your e-mail address. We will not share your e-mail address with others, and we will send only occasional announcements and interesting (largely political) comparisons -- see our privacy policy.

Are you a journalist or well-read blogger? If so, please contact us at account(at)versionista.com for access to previously archived comparisons of political sites.

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A few examples...

(Note: we are politically agnostic.)

August 27th, 2008

Why, oh why, is the term “August 3, 2008″ in the top 10 of the most searched for terms on the NY Times… for several weeks running now? And several weeks AFTER August 3rd!

Posted in Media

August 20th, 2008

Going to the Democratic convention? Don’t plan to go by rickshaw, apparently.

Posted in Other political

August 18th, 2008

Minutia warning! There is a 95% chance that this edit on the NYT’s The Caucus blog won’t be interesting to you! But to me it is pretty fascinating. The byline swap… “handshake” to “hug”… a streamlined summary of McCain and 9/11 on the sidebar. (I know where “handshake” came from… parts of the article were written before the meet; see this even earlier version.)

Posted in Media

August 18th, 2008

Significant transformation of Obama’s Social Security platform.

Posted in Obama campaign

August 18th, 2008

Huge overhaul of the Obama Energy page. Small addition to his Homeland Security page.

Posted in Obama campaign

August 17th, 2008

The Obama camp adds a Republicans section to its People page.

Posted in Obama campaign

August 15th, 2008

Politico links to Versionista to highlight a recent change to Cindy McCain’s biography page.

Posted in Media

August 14th, 2008

Vacation both before AND after the convention?

Posted in Other political

August 14th, 2008

With so many news blogs competing for eyeballs this cycle, an occasional breathless headline is forgivable.

Posted in McCain campaign, Media

August 11th, 2008

As a news aggregator primarily, Matt Drudge has ostensibly little room to advance his oft-alleged editorial bias. His tiniest edits, then, are worth examining.

In the few weeks we’ve been monitoring Drudge, all’s quiet on the partisan front. That said, here, headlines become more impactful when “pro soccer team” shifts to just “soccer team”, and “American Airlines” is removed from an air rage article. A Katie Couric pull-quote replaces a stodgy headline. The qualifying “after all” is removed from a story about New Hampshire accepting “Chavez oil”.

Posted in Media