After killing off cache links in February, Google has seemingly reversed course by teaming up with the Internet Archive to showcase older versions of websites in search results.
As of today (September 11), Google now puts direct links to cached versions of websites in Search via the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine (h/t Gizmodo).
With the ever-evolving internet, URLs and links are always changing. Articles, like this one, can get a simple edit, or people try to remove content. Other times websites just go away or someone stops paying hosting fees. For much of the last 30 years, Google has offered a way for you to see older versions of websites in a stripped-down and archived format.
When Google removed its caching feature in February, Google Search liaison Danny Sullivan said in a tweet, "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."
However, Sullivan did go on to say that he hoped Google would add links from the Internet Archive within the "About This Result" section in Searches.
"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," Sullivan added.
He didn't make any promises at the time but someone at the Internet Archive or Google — or both — was listening because it has come to pass.
The Internet Archive laid out how the new caching feature works in a blog post. Now, when you search, there will be three dots which brings up the "About This Result" panel. In that panel is a section called "More About This Page" where you'll find Wayback Machine pages for the website. The Wayback Machine page gives you a sort of static timelapse of how a webpage has looked at various points in time.
Google confirmed the change to 9to5Google. In a statement the company said, "We know that many people, including those in the research community, value being able to see previous versions of webpages when available. That’s why we’ve added links to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to our ‘About this page’ feature, to give people quick context and make this helpful information easily accessible through Search."
It's a welcome move, and the Internet Archive seems excited for the opportunity. A nice win for them after the non-profit lost a copyright lawsuit regarding the group's digital lending library last week.
“For more than 25 years, [the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine] been preserving snapshots of the public web," Wayback Machine director Mark Graham said in the Internet Archive post. "This digital time capsule transforms our ‘now-only’ browsing into a journey through internet history. And now, it’s just a click away from Google search results, opening a portal to a fuller, richer web—one that remembers what others have forgotten.”
Going forward, more websites are going to die and others will decay from disuse. Archiving is important not just for information but also seeing how the web has evolved as entire cultures are living and dying in digital-only spaces. This at least gives us one way to remember.
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