You aren't alone if you've been making Google searches these past few months and noticed missing cache results. On February 1st, 2024, Google's Search Liaison on Twitter officially confirmed that the feature has been axed. A quick and convenient link to cached versions of a webpage from the Google search result has been a staple of the search engine for well over a decade, but now it seems the most accessible version of the feature is gone entirely.
Technically, Google still archives search pages— for now. You can still use the "archive:[URL]" function in a Google search to pull up Google's latest archived copy of a given webpage. The image embedded below shows us using this command for the Tom's Hardware front page, since the original function is no longer available. According to the Search Liaison, this version of the feature is soon to disappear, too.
So, what are the alternatives for those of us who still need to access cached versions of webpages for whatever reason? The staple Internet Archive (archive.org) can't be ignored in this discussion, and Search Liaison Danny Sullivan directly mentions it as an alternative in the original tweet. Sullivan also hopes that higher-ups at Google consider working out a deal with Internet Archive to replace the old Google archive link in search results, but says "no promises" within the same tweet.
Besides falling back on Archive.org, users of the Google search engine may actually be pushed to consider Bing because of this change. Unlike Google, the Bing search engine still supports cached web pages right from the main result, so that's now at least one objective win for the cultured Bing enjoyers out there.
Overall, this news isn't world-shaking or anything since there are still alternatives to Google's cache, and it still technically works today. However, preserving the history of the Internet and its media is an ongoing challenge, and removing a vital preservation tool will only make that more difficult in the long term. As-is, Archive.org used to be the fallback you'd go to if Google cache didn't have the webpage version you needed— but before long, it'll become the de facto choice now that Google is stepping out of the game.
