Google Shutters Cached Link Feature, Removing Easy Access to Past Website Versions
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Google is shutting down its cached links feature in Search that allowed access to previous versions of webpages. It was useful for seeing sites that were down or tracking changes.
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The cached links feature was originally meant to help people access web pages when internet connections were unreliable.
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Journalists and SEO professionals used cached links to view previous versions of sites to track changes or get around paywalls.
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Google stored cached copies of websites it crawled, essentially backing up parts of the internet, but is now retiring this due to improved internet reliability.
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The Internet Archive's Wayback Machine does something similar by saving old versions of sites, but its future is uncertain. Losing the cached links removes an easy way to see previous versions of sites.