I Want My Cache, and I Want it Now!

by Sam Richter

 

(Or the Alternative Title:  What the heck happened to Google Page Preview and Cache?)

 

Have you ever conducted a Google search and when you click on the result, you got a page that said “Sorry, Site No Longer Appears?” What’s going on is at a certain date, Google did index–or vacuum up–the contents of a Web page. However, since the last time Google visited the page the page’s owner removed it from the Web server meaning the actual page is no longer on the Internet. Because the information is still in Google’s database, the result still appears yet because the Web page no longer exists, clicking on the link brings you to cyber-nothing.

The trick to seeing the original Web page was to click your browser’s back button and return to the search result list, hover your mouse cursor to the right of the result, open up the Page Preview window, and click the Cached link. The Cached link would pull up, in essence, a ‘picture’ of the Web page as it was when Google last indexed it.

But oh, oh…Google just decided to eliminate the Page Preview feature and thus, the Cached link also disappeared.

The good news is it didn’t permanently go away. Rather, it just moved locations.  So if you ever get “Sorry, Site No Longer Appears” you can access the Cached feature by following these steps:

1)  If you receive “Sorry, Site No Longer Appears,” click your browser’s back button and find the original Google search result.

2) Directly to the right of the result listing URL (website address) you’ll see an inverted triangle. Click on it.

3) In the drop-down menu you’ll see the Cached button/link. Click on it.

4) Google will now open up a window showing the Web page as it appeared when Google last indexed it.

Click the inverted triangle to the right of the search result to open Cache.

You’ll notice at the top of the screen that Google provides the date of its last index. If you use certain Web browsers (Chrome and Explorer and versions of other browsers), you’ll also notice that the words you originally searched for in Google are highlighted on the Cached page. This can be especially helpful when–even if the Web page does appear–it’s a page filled with text

Google Cached provides the index date, and in some browsers, automatically highlights your search terms.

Instead of having to Control-F and find every word you’re searching for, go back to the original search result and using the steps above, find and click the Cached link. Now the page you’ll see is the exact same result yet now all the words you were searching for will be highlighted, each word/phrase in a corresponding different color. Meaning you can scroll the page and quickly find exactly what you want.

Now you too can have an unlimited supply of Cache, now that you Know More!