Missing Cache - very strange
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Anyone have experience with a cache going missing from a page that had a cache in the past? We’re overhauling a page and noticed the cache was gone from Google results. We don’t know if this event is good/bad/doesn’t matter but I am curious why this happens. I am positive the cache was missing before we updated the page today because a programmer mentioned they did try checking for a cache for a historical load time prior to today for a different project. I have attached two screenshots to illustrate two things:
1) What google delivers for a cache: of the page instead of the normal cache page
2) Even though you can see a cache of any of the indexed pages we have from a serp, the cached link is missing in serps for the mentioned page
Has anyone seen this before?
thanks!
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no, not to large, it was the third most popular page behind the homepage. Whole page size is around 3mb.
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Thanks for taking the time to respond. I was logged in but I also had three other people (different IPs) check the search and we all received the same result. We all also had &pws=0. One of my concerns and one reason we adjusted the page was page size. Did the page you have in mind have a large page size or a long load time?
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Thanks.
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This is normal Google behavior. If you attempt to search for a page's cache using the "cache:" prefix, then if Google does not have the cached page but does have the page indexed, they will share the normal search result.
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I noticed this a little while ago too, it lasted for a little over a week but eventually showed up again though. I looked around for feed back on it to see why and came across a couple of instances (a little more elaborate than what I was experiencing albeit), but this post talks about it a little:
http://www.ghacks.net/2011/05/07/google-search-new-layout-style/
It's possible you or your results might be part of a test case for a new google release. Were you logged in? Maybe try from a different IP see if the results are the same...
Dunno, if that helped at all, but just something that might put your mind at rest a little.
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