Google retires page caching in search results

Confirmation of the end of the page cache on Google was made by the official Google Search Liaison account on X

Google will no longer provide links to page caches in its search results . The feature allowed web pages to be saved on Google’s own server.

Thus, it was used to access pages that were offline and check changes made to web addresses. Some users also used Google’s cache to access websites blocked in certain regions of the world.

The cache had already disappeared for some users in recent months, and its extinction was confirmed by Danny Sullivan, public relations at Google, on his X (formerly Twitter) account. “[Caching] was meant to help people access pages back in the day when you couldn’t depend on a website loading. These days, things have gotten a lot better,” he wrote. “So, we decided to retire him.”

There is still a way to check the cache, by typing “cache:” and the desired address. But, according to Sullivan, this form will also be deactivated soon.

Another way to see old versions of websites is WayBack Machine, which “photographs” what the page looks like on a certain date. The project was even praised by Sullivan. “I think [the WayBack Machine] would be quite suitable for the information literacy goals of [the] About This Result.”