Google cached pages: how to view tips and tricks
A cached link or page is temporarily stored HTML web documents and data, such as images, pages, and content, to reduce bandwidth usage and server load time to get the requested web page. The web caching system stores millions of copies of documents that pass through it daily. Once a user requests a particular page, which would normally be pre-cached, it would load much faster than the first time. A caching system can be a server like Google’s caching system or a computer program.
When we browse the web, our browsers generally save a copy of visited web pages in a caching system to speed up the process of retrieving data from the browser’s cache where it was stored, rather than from its original source.
What do Google cached pages mean?
Running a Google search often returned “cached” pages. Google cached pages are page snapshots taken by Google and saved when the bots last crawled a particular web page and indexed it. Users are informed that they are viewing a snapshot of the cached page followed by the day it was captured.
How do I check cached pages on Google?
Google cached pages can be easily accessed by clicking that green arrow, as shown in the screenshot below, next to the page URL. Once you click “Cached,” you’ll be redirected to a different version of a page that Google typically keeps as a backup when you last visited the site and crawled its content.
How do I find Google’s cached pages?
When you visit a particular website but the request returns a page error or page inaccessible, you will usually be prompted to view a “saved copy” of the web page you landed on. Chrome would display a “Show Saved Copy” button option when the browser fails to load the page.
If you want to remove cached content like snippets or images that are still in search results and you no longer want people to see it, all you have to do is submit your request using Google Webmaster Tools.
Even though you’ll still see the cached page URL and titles, Google will remove the cached page and snippet from search results.
However, if you want to restrict Google from caching a specific page, you may want to put the below tag in the
meta name=”ROBOTS” content=”NOARCHIVE,NOODP,NOYDIR”
Why do I need to see a cached page?
Due to the fact that various websites change quite frequently, their cached versions may be very different from the existing page you have visited in the search results. In fact, it’s probably useless to view an out-of-date web page, but there are specific situations where both website visitors and developers find it advantageous and useful to view cached pages, such as:
When a website doesn’t load or is no longer available, you can still see the cached copy stored in Google files.
When a website has changed drastically, a cached copy would be useful to quickly find its relevant and familiar content.
Although the cached web page is not refreshed frequently, it would load much faster than the usual page, which is an advantage for slow internet users.
For SEO purposes, viewing a cached page in text-only version allows you, as a developer, to discover how pages are crawled and indexed by Googlebots, which would act as an advantage to improve page content. specific keywords as well as other elements.
Expiring promotions and special discount offers may still exist on cached pages and therefore you can still catch up and benefit.
Eventually, Google cache is such a useful feature that it can help not only visitors but also developers to find, view and/or delete the content of a particular web page.