Want to view or access a cached version of a website that is currently not available or offline? You can use Chrome or Microsoft Edge for the same straight from the address bar without the need to visit Google Search.
View Cached Web Pages in Google Search results
What do you do if the website or webpage you’re trying to see is not available due to reasons like maintenance or removed or updated by the author or being blocked in your country?
You can simply go to Google, search for that site, click on the three-dot button next to the URL and select Cached.
Then Google’s cache of the web page will be displayed.
The webcache.Googleusercontent.com page also reveals when Google took a snapshot of that page.
You can able to see “text-only version“, as well as “Source” and the current live page from the cached page by clicking relevant options presented at the top.
Google stores a cached version of the webpage as a backup to let it serve to webmasters and users when that page goes offline. Cached pages are more useful for searchers than website owners.
View Google’s Cached version of a website in Chrome
- Open Chrome browser
- Type cache:URL in the address bar and press enter
Here you’ve to replace the URL with the URL of the Page you want to find a cached version for.
e.g://cache://https://example.com/firstpage.html
View Google’s Cached version of a website in Microsoft Edge
- Launch the Microsoft Edge browser
- Type cache: URL in the address bar.
Do note this only works when you set the search engine used in the address bar to Google than Bing.
In other browsers like Firefox, to find the cached version for a specific page from the address bar, type the following
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:URL
Do remember that the cached page was a snapshot of a page taken by the Google bot when it last crawled the site, this page might have changed in the meantime when you’re viewing it on your computer.
Why use Chrome than Google for seeing Cached webpages
- Google keeps changing the Cached option for URLS in search results. For instance, Some time back, Google moved the cached link underneath the search result to Instant Previews on the right so you might find it difficult to access from there also.
- The number of steps is less where you can run the command from the Chrome address bar.
More Chrome tips like this:
How to check Your Internet Speed on Chrome
How to Play local Video files in Chrome browser
Offline Cache Mode is Experimental feature in Google Chrome to let you read web pages offline
Where are the Cached and Similar Links for Search Results in Google?