For months and months I get complaints that the Google Cache is serving up a 404 error for their web sites. They are nervous and worried that this means there is an issue with their site and their web site rankings in Google will dive. I shared these two posts showing it is nothing to be worried about - but they still worry.
Google has said a 404 cache doesn't impact your rankings and many sites are experiencing 404 caches after moving to the mobile first indexing process. So this is common.
But John Mueller from Google shared on Twitter a workaround many SEOs have been talking about for weeks. If you change the URL of the cache URL, you can get it to work.
So remove your URL and replace it with x.xyz/ and it should work, that is, if you click on the 404 cache URL first and then chage it:
Here are some examples:
- http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JlcOHZi46tMJ:johnmu.com/ to http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:JlcOHZi46tMJ:x.xyz/
- https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KinA-3j4EHcJ:https://www.rustybrick.com/ to https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KinA-3j4EHcJ:x.xyz/
The cool thing, this site has yet to move to the mobile first index, so this site's cache URL still works fine.
It is a known issue on Google's end - so no need to panic.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
