After a couple of months of testing, it seems Google has now removed the cache link from the search results page. I no longer see a link to the Google cache within search result snippets but that doesn't mean you cannot access to cache, you can.
Now when you click the three dots for more information for a search result snippet, the cache button is missing. Here is a screenshot Frank Sandtmann shared with me and he posted more on Mastodon:
I tried this in several browsers and on two different internet connections and also no longer see the cache button.
So how do you access the cache? Just Google [cache:domain.com] - so for example, this site - you can search for [https://www.google.com/search?q=cache:seroundtable.com].
Do you still see the cache link? Maybe I am in a test group still?
Forum discussion at Mastodon.
Update: A few days after we covered this, Google's Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan, confirmed the cache link has been retired. He said on X:
Hey, catching up. Yes, it's been removed. I know, it's sad. I'm sad too. It's one of our oldest features. But it was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn't depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to retire it.Personally, I hope that maybe we'll add links to @internetarchive from where we had the cache link before, within About This Result. It's such an amazing resource. For the information literacy goal of About The Result, I think it would also be a nice fit -- allowing people to easily see how a page changed over time. No promises. We have to talk to them, see how it all might go -- involves people well beyond me. But I think it would be nice all around.
As a reminder, anyone with a Search Console account can use URL Inspector to see what our crawler saw looking at their own page: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/9012289
You're going to see cache: go away in the near future, too. But wait, I hear you ask, what about noarchive? We'll still respect that; no need to mess with it. Plus, others beyond us use it.
Hey, catching up. Yes, it's been removed. I know, it's sad. I'm sad too. It's one of our oldest features. But it was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn't depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to…
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) February 1, 2024
