Submitted 3 months ago by d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.engadget.com/google-search-is-losing-its-cached-web-page-feature-113503903.html
One of Google Search’s oldest and best-known features, cache links, are being retired. Best known by the “Cached” button, those are a snapshot of a web page the last time Google indexed it. However, according to Google, they’re no longer required.
“It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading,” Google’s Danny Sullivan wrote. “These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.”
Well that really sucks because it was often the only way to actually find the content on the page that the Google results “promised”. For numerous reasons - sometimes the content simply changes, gets deleted or is made inaccessible because of geo-fencing or the site is straight up broken and so on.
Yes, there’s archive.org but believe it or not, not everything is there.
Or locked behind 100 pages of unnecessarily paginated content. Seriously, one of the best features that a webpage has over a physical printed page is the ability to search it for what you were looking for… smh:-(.
That’s bs, it’s one of the best features Google has and they’ve been ruining it. Wayback machine wished it could be that comprehensive.
Wayback is definitely more comprehensive than Google. I’ve only seen three occasions of links Google has saved that Wayback hasn’t.
i fear for the days when some cruel unfeeling interest comes for archive.org too
of course it is. why have anything good on there, no point reminding me of the old days when the internet was actually fucking useful
Since when did you use this feature? Please cite a source
I last used the feature to view deleted reddit posts
I’ve used it three times today. Site down, geo-blocked, and a forum post with info I needed deleted.
Like a couple of times a year at least. Faster and easier than going to the way back machine to get a copy
So ignorant, if you’ve had to do any digital research, you know these tools intimately
You are a source. I am a source.
Without getting into too much detail, a cached site saved my ass in a court case. Fuck you Google.
It sucks because it’s sometimes (but not very often) useful but it’s not like they are under any obligation to support it or are getting any money from doing it.
Isn’t caching how anti-paywall sites like 12ft.io work?
Would you be willing to share more? It’s fine if you don’t want to, I wouldn’t either.
No, it was pretty personal, and also a legal matter, so I gotta take the high road.
Need the tea!!!
Was that not something the Wayback Machine could have solved?
Depends. Not every site, or its pages, will be crawled by the Internet Archive. Many pages are available only because someone has submitted it to be archived. Whereas Google search will typically cache after indexed.
At this rate Search will end up in the Google graveyard
It’ll be nothing but AI spam.
Replaced with just ad results.
Google is the king of giving bullshit reasons to hide their true intent.
My guess is ads don’t work in cached pages.
This is the real reason. Google is an ad company, not a search engine.
Just like that safetynet thing. They will write long pages about it, but won’t admit they want to make custom android roms unusable for the average user.
there are half a dozen still very good reasons to keep this feature and one not to: lost ad revenue
assholes
I can’t imagine there was even that much lost revenue. Cached pages are good for seeing basic content in that page but you can’t click through links or interact with the page in any way. Were so many people using it to avoid ads?
Were so many people using it to avoid ads?
I doubt that as well. There are much better ways to deal with that. I always only used it when the content on the page didn’t exist anymore or couldn’t be accessed for whatever reason.
But I suspected this was coming, they’ve been hiding this feature deeper and deeper in the last few years.
but you can’t click through links or interact with the page in any way
Most of the time that’s exactly what I want. I hate hunting through 473 pages of stupid bullshit in some janky forum to try to find the needle in that haystack.
I feel like 99% of its usage was to avoid ads/paywalls on news sites
You can’t lose what you never had. It’s desired ad revenue they’re after.
We that’s some shit. I often use that to get info off of pages that I won’t be clicking on normally.
The enshittification will continue until quarterly reports improve.
Just kidding, it will continue regardless.
Hahahaha, GOTTEM!
If anything it will keep accelerating the worse quarterly results are as they try to solve their way out of problems they made while still keeping the problems
These days, things have greatly improved.
Websites will never change their URLs today.
i maintain redirects for old URLs for which the content still exists at another address. i've been doing that since i started working on web sites 20-some years ago. not many take the time to do that, but i do. so there's at least a few web sites out there that if you have a 20 year old bookmark to, chances are it still works.
How has no one worked on a new search engine over the last decade or so where Google has been on a clear decline in its flagship product!
I know of the likes of DDG, and Bing has worked hard to catch up, but I’m genuinely surprised that a startup hasn’t risen to find a novel way of attacking reliable web search. Some will say it’s a “solved problem”, but I’d argue that it was, but no longer.
A web search engine that crawls and searches historic versions of a web page could be an incredibly useful resource. If someone can also find a novel way to rank and crawl web applications or to find ways to “open” the closed web, it could pair with web search to be a genuine Google killer.
My favorite case in point being Google Maps.
There’s a lot of startups trying to make better search engines. Brave for example is one of them. There’s even one Lemmy user, but I forget what the name of theirs is.
But it’s borderline impossible. In the old days, Google used webscrapers and key word search. When people started uploading the whole dictionary in white text on their pages, Google added some antispam and context logic. When that got beat, they handled web credibility by the number of “inlinks” from other websites. Then SEO came out to beat link farmers, and you know the rest from there.
An indexable version of Archive.org is feasible, borderline trivial with ElasticSearch, but the problem is who wants that? Sure you want I may, but no one else cares. Also, let’s say you want to search up something specific - each page could be indexed, with slight differences, thousands of times. Which one will you pick? Maybe you’ll want to set your “search date” to a specific year? Well guess what, Google has that feature as well.
Brave is not a business that should be supported. Also, I’m pretty sure they just use Bing for a back end.
There are also a few paid search engines that people say are good.
Cached versions can sometimes get around a paywall when a site gives Google access but charges users.
The next revolutionary search engine will be an AI that understands you. Like what a librarian is… Not just ads served.
i don’t need a search engine that understand me i need a search engine that finds sites and pages based on a string of text i provide it
we should be calling the future piss the way it’s going down the toilet
I recommend Kagi. Bought a family plan and it feels like I’ve gone back to 2016 when the search engines weren’t a dumpster fire.
Second kagi. I’m just on the personal plan, but can confirm it’s fire
Bing’s copilot is genuinely pretty good, the AI answer is often pretty accurate and the way it’s able to weave links into its answer is handy. I find it way more useful than Google search these days and I’m pretty much just using it on principle as Google is just pissing me off with killing their services, a few of which I’ve used.
I don’t think Microsoft is some saint but copilot is just a good product.
Yes, that would be a Google killer. If you somehow find the money to provide it for free.
Finding a novel way of searching is one thing. Finding a novel way of financing the whole endeavor (and not going the exact route Google is) is another.
Time to donate to the internet archibe.
By they way, I just found out that they removed the button, but typing “cache:” into Google still redirects you to the cached version (if it exists). But who knows for how long.
they’ve broken / ignored every modifier besides site: in the last few years, god knows how long that’ll work
Quotes are fucking awful now. You have to change the search terms to verbatim now which takes way fucking longer. Google has enshittified almost everything. I’m just waiting for them to ruin Maps.
My guess is that a cached page is just a byproduct when the page is indexed by the crawler. The need a local copy to parse text, links etc. and see the difference to the previous page.
I hope they only kill the announced feature but keep the cache part.
Just today I had to use it because some random rss aggregator website had the search result I wanted but redirected me somewhere completely different…
It was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn’t depend on a page loading,” Google’s Danny Sullivan wrote. “These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it."
They still go down, Danny. And fairly frequently at that. Y’all are fuckin’ stupid.
I’d say things are much worse than they used to be. Sure, in the past sites would disappear or completely fail more often. But, because most sites were static, those were the only ways they could fail. These days the cache feature is useful for websites that have javascript bugs preventing them from displaying properly, or where the content-management-system still pretends the link works but where it silently just loads different content.
I find this very useful to read paywalled articles that Google has managed to index!
OK, I see why they might want to get rid of it.
Ironically just yesterday I needed Google Cache because a page I needed to read was down and I couldn’t find the option anymore.
Are we going to need to go back to personal web crawlers to back-up information we need? I hate today’s internet.
Absolute cunts
I stopped using Google late last year and it’s pretty eye opening how much freer I feel now. Previously, any searches I made would follow me around. Make a one time search for something I’d see that being advertised later on. As a result I started searching more using private browsing. I’d often forget though and end up being tracked.
Ultimately switching to Firefox and DuckDuckGo I no longer have to do private searches. No more being followed around the internet.
Also I’m not convinced private browsing works. For example I still use it for YouTube but I noticed despite YouTube not knowing who I am, the videos on the home page include some that are very related to my usual videos. I guess they are using IP’s to still deliver relatable videos.
didn’t that happen like a years ago? or maybe because I am using Firefox, but I haven’t seen the button for the cached website for a while now
Ironically, the link to this as article is offline for me. “Cached” surely would solve my problem.
In a shocking turn of events, google decided once again to make their namesake service worse for everyone.
Legitimately baffling, keeping this feature doesn’t really seem like it would impact anyone except those that use it, while removing it not only impacts those people that already use it, but those who would potentially have reason to in the future.
Cannot think of a single benefit to removing a feature like this.
Finally, an excuse to use the Wayback Machine for all of my searches!
Has Elon secretly bought Google too?
It has barely existed for years anyway. Anyone can remove the Google caching from their website and most major websites and many small ones do.
Now I just have an archive.org extension to do the se thing basically.
Fuck. I sometimes use the text-only version to access sites with too many moving elements or when the site is geoblocked or doesn’t respect cookies choices and denies access. So far, it has been the most reliable one for me.
That is BS, a site can be down at any time, did we fix downtimes for good? Those down detector sites might just shut down as well then ಠ_ಠ
Google well on their way on their uber-dick speedrun
Google is spelled Kagi now. :)
Enshitification strikes again. Cached doesn’t make money and maybe reduces adclicks so it’s gone. This benefits Google but not users in any way whatsoever.
nicetriangle@kbin.social 3 months ago
They really have just given up on being a good search engine at this point huh?
lauha@lemmy.one 3 months ago
They are an Ad company, and using cached page doesn’t bring ad money to their clients
kratoz29@lemm.ee 3 months ago
Make sense, it seems that they have been having lots of meetings regarding how to maximize its revenue
Juvyn00b@lemmy.world 3 months ago
They’ll reintroduce the feature with their own ads embedded.
lemmyvore@feddit.nl 3 months ago
They may not have a choice in the matter. AI-generated pages are set to completely destroy the noise to signal ratio on the web.
Google’s business has two aspects, collecting user data and serving ads. If Search stops being relevant people will stop using it, which impacts both aspects negatively.