GifCities: weird website review & sites like it

GifCities is a search engine for the animated GIFs saved from the GeoCities archive. Type a word, and it returns a wall of dancing babies, flaming skulls, spinning globes and under-construction signs from the 90s web. It is a lively, glittery time capsule.

The pleasure is in the searching. Try obvious words like cat or star, then stranger ones, and see what the early web had to say. Each result links back to the page it came from, so you can see the GIF in its original home.

The site is operated by the Internet Archive. When our checker visited, the server returned a rate-limit page from archive.org, which means it can be briefly unavailable if it is busy, but it is normally up. Allow about five minutes. If you like it, Cameron's World and Neocities Browse in our list are close relatives. Content note: the GIFs are user-made and of their era, so quality and taste vary.

Tips for getting the most out of it

Search simple words first, then odd ones.
Click through to see the original page.
Try again later if you see a rate-limit page.

Questions about GifCities

What is GifCities?

GifCities is a search engine for animated GIFs preserved from the GeoCities archive, operated by the Internet Archive. You can find it at gifcities.org, and odd-sites.com lists it as a five-minute visit. We have not confirmed how it behaves on phones, so a computer is the safer choice.

Why does GifCities sometimes show a rate-limit page?

When we checked, the server returned a rate-limit page from archive.org. That can happen when the service is busy, so waiting a little and trying again usually helps. We check the link daily, so you can see whether it is still alive. It is free to open in a browser, with nothing to install.