End of an era at Google – functionality officially removed

25 years ago, the Internet was very different. It was a patchwork of workarounds. Sometimes, typing a URL will bring up a website. Other times nothing happened and the URLs didn't work. the Google, just a startup with a weird name will soon offer a solution. The company added “cache” links to search results, which displayed a previously cached version of web pages. The Internet has now matured and Google is among the most powerful conglomerates in history. So, as of today, link caching is officially a thing of the past.

The change, was first spotted by Search engine landThis was just confirmed by Danny Sullivan, Google's head of search relations, the company's go-to guy for SEO professionals. (Search engine optimization).

“Yes, it's been removed. I know, it's sad. I'm sad too,” Sullivan wrote on Friday. “It's one of our oldest features. But it was meant to help people get to pages when you often weren't sure the page would load. These days things have improved a lot. So it was decided to retire.”

Nostalgia for a button that many people have probably never heard of may seem silly, but Google's cache function was a fundamental solution to one of the web's early problems. As the web evolved into a more stable infrastructure, caching was mostly abandoned by everyday users, but it remained a useful tool.

SEO personnel used it to track changes made by competitors. Journalists and researchers have examined the bunkers to trace the historical record. Some savvy internet users knew that caching was a way to bypass paywalls or access sites blocked in certain regions.

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But Google's cached links have been on the back burner for some time now. Previously, there was a cache button next to them Blue links on Google.com, but the company has moved the feature to the menu “about this result”, where he remained in obscurity. As The Verge reported, a Google engineer tweeted in 2021 that the cache is an “old feature that has basically not been maintained.” For now, you can still view your Google cache by typing “cache:” before the URL, but this too will stop working soon.

There is another solution, but it is on shaky foundations. the Internet Archive Wayback Machine It maintains historical copies of websites as a public service, but the organization is in a constant battle to remain financially viable. Google's Sullivan has floated the idea of partnering with the Internet Archive, although this is far from the official plan.

“Personally, I hope we add links to @internetarchive, from where we had the cache link before, inside 'About this score.' It's an incredible resource,” Sullivan tweeted. “No promises. We have to talk to them and see how this can be done. It involves people other than me.”

source: FOXreport.gr