Google Cache Is Fully Dead

Sep 24, 2024 - 7:52 am 4 by
Filed Under Google

Google Suitcase Cache

Google has now totally disabled the Google Cache from completely working. Earlier this year, Google removed the cache link from the search result snippets. Then a couple of weeks ago, added links to the Wayback Machine. Now, the direct link to see the Google Cache has been fully disabled.

If you try to go directly to the Google Cache - something I have tried literally every day since Google removed the links from the search results - Google will now show nothing:

Here is the link I've been trying daily at this link:

Google Cache Dead

This stopped working in the past 12 hours or so.

There are a lot of people chattering about it on social:

As a reminder, Google's Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, said on X:

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 for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn't depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it. Personally, I hope that maybe we'll add links to @internetarchive from where we had the cache link before, within About This Result. It's such an amazing resource. For the information literacy goal of About The Result, I think it would also be a nice fit -- allowing people to easily see how a page changed over time. No promises. We have to talk to them, see how it all might go -- involves people well beyond me. But I think it would be nice all around.

As a reminder, anyone with a Search Console account can use URL Inspector to see what our crawler saw looking at their own page.

You're going to see cache: go away in the near future, too. But wait, I hear you ask, what about noarchive? We'll still respect that; no need to mess with it. Plus, others beyond us use it.

Here are some of those posts:

So he told use the cache: operator would go away in the "near future." That took 9 months or so to happen and now it is gone.

What are your alternatives? So, yea, the Wayback Machine or the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console or Google's rich result testing tool.

Forum discussion at BlackHatWorld.

Update: After this story was published, Google confirmed the cache operator no longer works. Google posted, "The cache: search operator no longer works in Google Search."

Google also removed it from the docs, so the old version of search operators had this:

Cache Operartor Google Docs

This story was originally published at 6am ET but updated at 7:52am ET.

 

Popular Categories

The Pulse of the search community

Follow

Search Video Recaps

 
- YouTube
Video Details More Videos Subscribe to Videos

Most Recent Articles

Search Forum Recap

Daily Search Forum Recap: October 14, 2024

Oct 14, 2024 - 10:00 am
Google

Why Google Search Is Broken Video Gets Millions Of Views

Oct 14, 2024 - 7:51 am
Google

Google Search Tests Replacing Google Logo With Super G Logo

Oct 14, 2024 - 7:41 am
Google Ads

Google Ads Adds Gross Profit Optimization Campaign Setting

Oct 14, 2024 - 7:31 am
Google

Google Search Tests Top Links Title For Sitelinks?

Oct 14, 2024 - 7:21 am
Bing Search

Microsoft Unshipped 27 Bing Features

Oct 14, 2024 - 7:11 am
Previous Story: Google Fixed Google Search Console Product Snippets Report