Google’s Cache Broken

Google has seen substantial fluctuations, alterations, etc. over the last several months as the Big-Daddy roll-out has occurred. It appears, however, that among the many things that have buckled under this system is the cache.

Our example site is Destination Villas, a popular vacation rental listing site.

(1) First, we start with the site:www.destinationvillas.com to show all the pages Google has listed for the site. If you notice, Google lists over 100 pages to the site, including the homepage, for which Google claims to have a cache.

(2) Second, we click on the “cache” link and, sure enough, it is there.

(3) Third, we start checking other Google results, such as simply searching for www.destinationvillas.com. Oops! It looks like Google lost that entire site some how! What happened Google?

(4) Fourth, well surely Google’s cache: command will work, since we already know that it is cached. So, we search for cache:www.destinationvillas.com. Oops! Again I Say Oops! It appears that Google has lost the cache: as well!

(5) Fifth, let’s try one more, we will use the inurl: command. So, we search for inurl:www.destinationvillas.com. There it is! With the cache link again!

So the moral of the story is this. Google’s cache function is broken. Period. There are some pretty unhappy side effects to this, unfortunately. Many sites refuse to link to other sites that are not cached by Google because they are afraid to link “to bad neighborhoods”. If individuals are using the cache: command to determine this, then they may be turning up a bunch of false negatives. It is also just plain annoying.

So, Google, when can we expect this to be fixed, if ever? What implications does the broken cache have on site ranking and seo (search engine optimization)?

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