I have to imagine that Google didn’t make a lot of money from people pinging its search engine for cached website results, but making it convenient to access was a service to searchers.
It was also a bit of a service to society. Often when information scandals broke out, such as content with glaring errors, evidence of social media statements being deleted, or information at risk of appearing offline in a short time, he was a great support that worked more effectively than the ‘Internet archive to capture new data. information
And yet, for some reason, Google has treated this feature like it’s embarrassing. Over the years, it’s buried the feature in its search interface, making it harder and harder to find, though I found it just as useful as the day it launched.
Recently, the company began removing it entirely, which the SEO sphere’s closest thing to an investigative reporter discovered, Barry Schwartz of the Search Engine Roundtable. As he writes:
After a couple of months of testing, it looks like Google has now removed the cache link from the search results page. I no longer see links to Google cache in search result snippets, but that doesn’t mean you can’t access it [the] cache, you can. Now when you click the ellipsis to get more information for a search result snippet, the cache button is missing.
To be clear, the cache is not gone, it’s just hidden from public view. (I don’t see it on my end either.) You can access it manually by typing in a specialized URL like But if you choose not to present it to people when they search, you can’t point the cursor in that general direction. Defaults are still essential to how we experience computers, and we don’t do enough to ensure they stay.
The removal of this feature represents multiple things: First, a changing and more dynamic Internet in which more content is built with the requirement of JavaScript, something that is largely incompatible with the cache function. And secondly, a decision built with the bottom line in mind: after all, if you click on a website accessed through Google’s cache, you don’t open the Google AdSense ads that generally appear when you view the normal version of the site. .
Now, to be clear, Google still caches pages on the Internet. After all, the cache is a key element of the AMP initiative this has shaped much of how people use their search engine over the past decade. Google simply doesn’t want you to use it as an alternative to seeing the actual search result.
I usually suggested that Google results they are not necessarily getting worse in an era of generative AI, despite the fact that arguments to the contrary are in vogue. But I think the evidence supporting the claim is getting harder and harder to ignore.
Thinking as a journalist, if I’m trying to uncover something or follow a thread that seems to be unraveling by the second, I don’t want a tool like this taken away from me. But in the last year, we’ve seen more and more of these tools degraded and damaged by large companies that have decided they’re no longer in their best interest. For example, Meta’s Threads has discouraged chronological searching, while the place I call Twitter has made it harder to find links to external platforms. He often looked for YouTube videos on Twitter to understand their virality; I can’t do it anymore.
There are valid arguments against making these tools readily accessible. After all, if abuse or ganging is a big factor on a given platform, as Meta has long had to deal with on Instagram, having immediate access to recent comments opens up opportunities for bullying.
And maybe having these cached sites so easily accessible led to some kind of legal pressure that Google no longer wanted to deal with.
But I can’t help but feel that this is just another sign that we can no longer trust valuable features in the hands of big companies. They often shape and frame the way we access and manage data, and when they feel like getting it out, that’s what they’ll do.
Uncached links
by Nilay Patel review of the Apple Vision Pro for The Verge is a masterclass in excellent reviews, separating the hype surrounding a hyped device from what it can actually do and what its real limits are.
Tommy Wiseau, who inspires all my good ideas, stars in a new ad for 1Password, which brings me a unique level of joy. (Ryan Reynolds’ advertising agency, Maximum Effort, participated, because of course it was.) Surely this ad has a bigger budget than The Room.
Adobe has decided stop competing completely with Figma, throwing their XD software overboard. (Side note for switches: Penpot is about to come out with a big update!)
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