Google is finally ending caching on search results pages

Google is finally ending caching on search results pages

It turns out that Google has removed links that provide site caching from search results pages. At the time of writing, you can browse the cache using the search operator “cache:,” but Google announced that this feature will be discontinued in the near future.

Google Won't Back Up Your Internet Anymore: Cached Web Pages Are Dead | Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/02/google-search-kills-off-cached-webpages/

Google Search drops cache link from search results

https://www.seroundtable.com/google-search-drops-cache-link-from-search-results-36787.html

Google Search has a caching feature that displays sites in their last visited state, allowing Google to see the previous state of deleted or modified pages.

By Google

According to IT news site Ars Technica, links to this feature have no longer been displayed in search results for some users since around December 2023. Search Engine Land, a news site specializing in SEO and search, reported that the link to the cache was officially deleted around January 25, 2024.

When I actually looked for it, I found that the cache wasn't actually visible in Google search results at the time the article was created.

Danny Sullivan, Google's head of search, posted on In the days when you couldn't rely on a page to load. It's gotten a lot better these days, so I decided to stop it. “The cache function has been deleted.

Hey, catch up. Yes, it has 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 get to pages where you often couldn't rely on the page loading. These days, things have improved dramatically. So, it was decided… — Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) February 1, 2024

Mr. Sullivan is considering adding a link to the Internet Archive, but cannot promise anything as he is currently in discussions with the Internet Archive.

At the time of writing, you can view the cache by entering “cache:'' and searching for the URL of the site you want to view the cache, but Sullivan said that will also disappear in the near future.