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Google removes the “cache:” operator and cached pages from search

Google will soon remove the ability to view a cached version of a webpage. The company has already removed the cached links from search, and the "cache:" operator in the URL is the next subject to be killed. While the links have gone, the cache operator still works. It is currently only applicable to web searches and provides users with access to a cached version of a webpage generated by Google.

This allows users to access the content even when the website itself is unavailable. To use this feature, users need to enter "cache:site.com/page.html" in the search box on Google.

Google Cache Removed

Google's Danny Sullivan recently posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the cache operator will soon become part of the search history. He explains that it is one of Google's oldest features, designed to ensure that users can still access data when a website is inaccessible.

However, such situations rarely occur nowadays, leading to the decision to discontinue this option. Sullivan expressed hope that Google can collaborate with the Internet Archive in the future to include links to archived versions of websites from The Wayback Machine in the "About this result" section.

Anyways, it won't be an in-place replacement. The cache feature in Google loads quickly and guarantees to bring up a recent and accurate snapshot. Sure, it is same thing as the Wayback Machine does, but sometimes it had copies of websites that the Wayback Machine can't offer. So yet another useful feature is vanished.

The change has been originally spotted by Barry Schwartz.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

One thought on “Google removes the “cache:” operator and cached pages from search”

  1. Google gave away their plans they abandoned their slogan “Don’t be evil”.

    When Google Labs went away it was a sign of a pro-advertiser anti-user agenda. Revenue is important, but power-users no longer matter, as teh engineers at Google are of much lower quota-meeting caliber now. The best man for the job no longer is hired/promoted.

    Then in 2016 Google actively committed, publicly, to preventing another 2016 election – their CEO even said so (and yes, in public).

    When they removed sort by date, they removed your ability to see the latest non-news search results from the web. And any news-site that they don’t like, doesn’t show up in their “news” feed – the last place you can sort by newest.

    Then they removed pages. Literally now, it would take days to scroll to the bottom of most search results. But they don’t even allow to scroll down infinitely – they cut you off arbitrarily; and deny access to approximately 90% of the web-pages on the internet. A full 90% internet is now un-indexed.

    Google used to be a great a tool for finding old obscure websites if you worded your search terms correctly. But even with “Verbatim” turned on now, and even when signed out, you will no longer get the most relevant results.

    The death of 90% of all of web-sites via de0lsiting from google’s monopoly on website-indexing has left the world-wide-web as a shallow remnant of its former glory. The access to YouTube videos on every subject pre-2016 was the peak of the infromation age. You could find detailed videos from PhD’s and the like on topics in Science, History, LLaw, Physics, Medicine, etc, that are ALL now banned and purged from the website.

    Even Rumble is forced to prevent you from searching from certain topics that question the historical accuracy of claims unverified by anything other than 100% conflicting accounts of the most notorious event in the 20th century that lead to execution of countless people, and the creation of an entire nation. Yet discussing the motivations for said events is forbidden, and even Rumble and BitChute won’t let search the topic anymore. Amazon removed all book on the topic from PhD’s and documentarians alike.

    And that is jsut one of thousands of forbidden areas of research.

    The internet is now a shallow corporate echo chamber, that unless you obtain the URL’s yourself you can no longer see content that the powers-that-be do not want you consider or think about.

    By doing so they have created a resrgence in nasty movement of the 20th centurty, and a certain group people are once again being persecuted openly by a scary precentage of the population. Perhaps if they did no censor information this frustrating prejudice-filled mentality would no be spreading like a virus…. another topic you cannot discuss openly if you wish to remain on youtube’s monopolistic website, or listed on the same company’s monopolistic search engine.

    This world is in peril. Borders have been opened, and the people discovering who’s funding it are being banned from all topics.

    Google must remove the cache to purge any remnants of webpages/web sties they don’t wont seeing. They want you to only be able to view sites as they approve of them, not “facts” from before they hooves on them.

    God help us all.

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