We consider the qualitative behaviour of solutions to linear integral equations of the form(1)y(t)=g(t)+∫0tk(t-s)y(s)ds,where the kernel k is assumed to be either integrable or of exponential type. After a brief review of the well-known Paley–Wiener theory we give conditions that guarantee that exact and approximate solutions of (1) are of a specific exponential type. As an example, we provide an analysis of the qualitative behaviour of both exact and approximate solutions of a singular Volterra equation with infinitely many solutions. We show that the approximations of neighbouring solutions exhibit the correct qualitative behaviour.