Google Cache May Be Gone, But Search Gets Internet Archive Shortcuts as an Option

Earlier this year, Google killed one of the handiest shortcuts the internet has ever seen, at least for those of us who may want to see a bit of recent history for a website that may have changed. Google Search’s “cached” links option went away and the reasoning behind the removal is quite odd.

At the time of its removal, Google said that the tool was only there in the early years of the internet because “you often couldn’t depend on a page loading,” so having a cached version of the site easily available helped. Apparently, things have “greatly improved” over the years in that regard, so Google decided to retire it.

Again, this was a powerful tool to see if something had changed on the internet or maybe because you swear something was there, only for it to quickly disappear. I can’t tell you how often I used it and miss it dearly.

In a bit of good news on this front, Google has announced that it has added shortcuts to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which is really the only other major source that keeps a history of the internet. While not nearly as quick to cache something as Google Search was, the Wayback Machine is indeed another beautiful piece of the internet that we use often and this is a bonus to see.

Unfortunately, Google has buried the links to Internet Archive a bit. To find these links, you would have to click the 3-dot menu for a search result, then the “More about this page” box in the window that appears from that, then scroll a bit until you find a section that says “See previous versions on Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.” This should give you a link to the Internet Archive’s history of the page, assuming it has been archived.

It’s something.