Google Search's Cache Links Are Officially Being Retired (theverge.com) 32
Google has removed links to page caches from its search results page, the company's search liaison Danny Sullivan has confirmed. From a report: "It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn't depend on a page loading," Sullivan wrote on X. "These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it."
The cache feature historically let you view a webpage as Google sees it, which is useful for a variety of different reasons beyond just being able to see a page that's struggling to load. SEO professionals could use it to debug their sites or even keep tabs on competitors, and it can also be an enormously helpful news gathering tool, giving reporters the ability to see exactly what information a company has added (or removed) from a website, and a way to see details that people or companies might be trying to scrub from the web. Or, if a site is blocked in your region, Google's cache can work as a great alternative to a VPN.
The cache feature historically let you view a webpage as Google sees it, which is useful for a variety of different reasons beyond just being able to see a page that's struggling to load. SEO professionals could use it to debug their sites or even keep tabs on competitors, and it can also be an enormously helpful news gathering tool, giving reporters the ability to see exactly what information a company has added (or removed) from a website, and a way to see details that people or companies might be trying to scrub from the web. Or, if a site is blocked in your region, Google's cache can work as a great alternative to a VPN.
passive recon (Score:2)
I was very nice for passive recon when you wanted to fly over every indexed page on host/domain without being spotted for making an usually rapid number of http requests/and or hitting an unsual number of different assets in a short window.
But there a lots of ways to accomplish this now anyway, and that if the target has not done 90% of the work for you with thrid-party caches of their own; but Google made it easy.
This has been a useful feature (Score:5, Insightful)
This feature has been useful when content is removed. For example, XYZ company taking down a post because it was deemed scandalous, to save face. There are other similar purposes that this feature has served well, like old recipes. From what I can tell the API allows for sites to tell Google's engine not to cache links/content -- so why remove it? I wonder what their internal metrics are of those accessing this feature.
Re:This has been a useful feature (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Wikipedia references links are automatically archived since ~2015 on archive.org.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There's a bot which checks dead links, but when it didn't notice a dead link you can find the archived version manually.
Re: (Score:2)
Every time I tried a cached link it took forever to load and whatever was supposedly there according to the search never actually was.
Re:This has been a useful feature (Score:5, Insightful)
>useful feature
That's precisely why they removed it.
Google's business model is to make you view ads and promoted content. That's it. To its products (users) that's seen as an anti-feature, and the side-effects are the real feature. Your usage of Google is fundamentally opposed to Google's interests.
Re: (Score:3)
There's plenty of correct posts in this thread, but yours is probably the correctest.
Re: (Score:2)
Yea, it's strange to see them implying that web links are more permanent now, when they are more ephemeral and less trustworthy than ever.
Also there were all manner of things very embarassing to those in power that were available on these links. While there are plenty of archive services, no one could just pretend google was making stuff up (or whatever), like I've seen people do online. "Oh that archive site? Well it has pirate stuff on it so we can't trust it!" etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Weren't they already doing this? (Score:2)
The thing is though, this was many months ago. So apparently they've been planning AND implementing this for a long
Re: (Score:3)
This is going to be REALLY missed (Score:5, Interesting)
If/When Archive.org (The Way-Back Machine) ever goes off line.
Thoughtcrime (Score:5, Interesting)
This feature has been particularly useful for finding revised news articles which are retracted or revised for one reason or another.
Considering Google's persistent and apparent intention to Be Evil over the past recent years, this is hardly surprising.
Big Brother is alive and well. (Though, I hear, even mentioning Orwell these days gets you categorized as a right-wing extremist, so... *shrug*)
Never understood why they hid it. (Score:2)
That's going to be annoying i've used that a lot over the years.
It was always annoying that it wouldn't show the button on mobile and they've refused to show it on mobile AFAIK ever since they added a mobile version.
These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.
Has it? Has it really? Stuff seems to poof out of existence as regularly now as it ever did, probably even more so now as though it's probably happening about the same rate there's so much more stuff today than there was a decade ago.
Re: (Score:2)
When Google says things have greatly improved what the mean is that you will almost certainly be routed to some landing page with as many Google ad impressions on it as the page you were looking for rather than an Generic Apache 404.
So in Google's view there is no good reason for them to host any content or create place to stuff some ad words etc any longer.
To find the info you searched for (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I used it it was to find the actual information I was searching for. Quite often you search for some keyword (in quotes to force an exact match) and when you click through to the website, the information is nowhere to be found.
Often this is because it was hidden to normal users who they wanted to jump through hoops to look at their precious data, but they want to use google as a free marketing tool.
The cached version showed the same thing they show google, so they can't hide it.
Re: (Score:2)
These days there are ways to do it... I've clicked on a Google link and was brought not only to the site in question, but the paragraph itself was highlighted with the words matching in color.
So there is some way to deep link stuff that Google is using so it can show you what it thought was the relevant word or phrase on the page.
But I suppose in reality, it doesn't really matter much. There used to be a time when Google only went around every week or so and now it seems to be indexing things based on how f
What a news! (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
LOL, can't imagine why. (Score:2)
Enshitification continues (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems like this wouldn't have happened if Google weren't so dominant in search. Bing is still offering cached pages. However much more reliable the web is now compared to when it was when Google was founded, the cache is still useful for cases when content is intentionally removed or modified.
Re: (Score:2)
Kagi seems pretty good. I'm still on a trial, but I'll probably start paying for it next week. (It doesn't seem to cache web sites, but it does have a summarizer tool that can summarize sites. And there are other queries that do special things as well.)
Coral Caches! (Score:2)
I remember this was useful for unreachable web pages too.
Sounds like... (Score:2)
It's time for another donation to the Internet Archive.
https://archive.org/donate [archive.org]
It was a useful feature (Score:1)
The enshittification continues.