A major advantage to serial strips from publication on the web is the immediate availability of the entire archives on the site, freeing the strip from the useless "recap" panels seemingly required in all non-gag comic strips published in newspapers.

Most sites have archived their strips with various means to find specific comics via dates and storylines. Another useful tool that is not as commonly available is to make the text of the archived comics searchable. Apparently Sluggy Freelance's horde of fans recently completed the work necessary to make the entire Sluggy archives searchable by character and their dialogue. For example, Keanau Reeves has nothing on lead character Torg who has said "whoa" twelve times in the archives.