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To understand Cached Search Results we must first look at how Google’s search actually works. In order to provide us with the most relevant results from the billions of pages on the internet, Google utilizes a computer program which ‘crawls’ every page for their content. If this crawl was performed from scratch every time we search, you can imagine the search taking quite a long time.

To overcome this, a ‘picture’ of every page is copied saved cached to Google’s servers. You can view these captured pages via the Cached link that is included with each result (illustrated below).

Cached search results are useful for several reasons:

• Backup – view a web page even if the ‘real’ one is unavailable
• Highlighting – each instance of your search word(s) is highlighted
• Accessibility – you can click thru to a Text-only version for easier reading
• Hacking – wait, what? wouldn’t this be wrong?

Yes, of course. Thou Shalt Not Knowingly Hack Thy Neighbors Protective Measures.

But what if Google does it without our knowledge?

I discovered this interesting scenario only when a Google Alert link landed me on a web page in which my keyword(s) did not appear anywhere. Instead, the expected content was replaced by a couple of teaser lines and a form to request only a free sample of the content – which is quite lame!

But wait.. if a paid registration is required to view the full article, then how did Google find it and alert me? My keyword(s) clearly exists somewhere on the page because the alert text included it along with the surrounding context.  Nearly enraged and ready to give up, the epiphany finally occurred. It does not matter how Google was able to read the full article – only that it did; and therefore it would be Cached!

At this point it would only take a simple Google search to access the ‘Cached’ version of the page which was supposed to be paid for prior to viewing. So is Google stealing? Personally I do not see it this way and instead put the responsibility on the website owner and/or designer to publish properly coded web pages which prevent the unauthorized access. Then again, maybe it is intentional so that the pages appear in our Google search results to begin with.

In any case, Cached search results from Google is a great feature that everyone should be aware of. Enjoy.