Google recently updated its Google Cache documentation on its website cache, and in doing so indirectly created a reminder that the cache is still available for virtually any web page Google has indexed.
What Google said about web page caching
What was reported about Google’s cache may have inadvertently left the impression that it was permanently and irretrievably gone. But this is still not the case.
Here is SearchLiaison’s announcement on Twitter:
“Hey, catching up. Yes, it’s been removed. I know, it’s sad. I’m sad too. It’s one of our oldest features. But it was meant to help people access pages when back , you couldn’t depend on a page loading very often. Things have improved a lot these days. So it was decided to remove it.
Personally, I’m hoping that maybe we’ll add links to @internetarchive from where we had the cache link before, in About this result. It is such an amazing resource. For About The Result’s information literacy goal, I think that would also be a good solution: to allow people to easily see how a page has changed over time. no promises We have to talk to them, see how everything can go – it involves people far beyond me. But I think it would be fine all around.
As a reminder, anyone with a Search Console account can use the URL Inspector to see what our crawler has seen looking at their own page:
Cache disappeared from Google Search. But it is still available as a search operator.
The report was correct that the cache was gone from search, but the part about its availability as a search operator was drowned in the noise.
SearchLiaison was at the forefront of the search operator.
His tweet continued:
“You will see the cache – disappear in the near future as well.”
The “Caché:” search operator still works
Google recently updated its Search Central documentation on the cache search operator: to remove instructions on how to view the cache directly from search results. But that’s all. There is no additional disclaimer that the cache search operator: disappears.
Google’s updated documentation removed references to the cache in the two-section search.
The documentation removes the following sentences:
“There are two ways to find the cached version of a page:
Find the cache: followed by the URL of the page, for example:
cache:https://example.com/your/page.html
Search for the URL, then click the 3 dots or arrow in the corner of the result to access a link to the cached version of the page.”
Google’s new documentation replaced the above paragraph with the following reworded passage:
“To find the cached version of a page, search for the cache: followed by the URL of the page, for example:
cache memory:
The second change removed the references to the cache in the search for this passage (the part in italics is removed):
“Most pages that Google has indexed also have a cached version. When a page doesn’t have a cached version, the methods mentioned above to find the cached version will fail…
The previous text is replaced by the following:
“Most pages that Google has indexed also have a cached version. When a page does not have a cached version, using the cache search operator: to find the cached version fall will fail…”
Google’s SearchLiaison said that the cache: search operator would disappear in the near future. The suggestion that Google might add a link to the Internet Archive is not a useful replacement.
The reason it’s not useful is that Google’s search operator cache: is useful for checking whether competitor pages are indexed, not indexed, or recently indexed, which is useful information.
The cache search operator is still around so enjoy it while it lasts.
Read Google’s documentation on cache: search operator:
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