Google Search has a new way of preserving internet history

By Willow Roberts Published September 11, 2024

After retiring cached results at the start of the year, Google is now, as reported by The Verge, adding embedded Internet Archive links to search results so we can still view older versions of websites.

You’ll find the new Wayback Machine links right where the cached links used to be by clicking the three dots next to a link in the results and selecting “More about this page.” The option to “See previous versions on Internet Archive” should be at the bottom of the page. Changes to the search engine can take a while to consistently show up for everyone, so keep checking back if you can’t see it yet.

When Google Search liaison Danny Sullivan confirmed the retirement of cached links in February, he added a personal hope that they could be replaced by Internet Archive links.

Hey, catching up. 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…

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) February 1, 2024

It seems the idea reached the right people, and now the collaboration has been successfully implemented — the Internet Archive has detailed the feature in a blog post. The nonprofit has been around since 1996, archiving over 150 billion web pages to keep them preserved and accessible for researchers, historians, and anyone else who wants to have a look.

You can search the archive directly, but this new collaboration with Google will make it much easier and more convenient to access archived versions of websites as you’re going about your daily browsing.

As cool as the Wayback Machine links are, however, they’re not replacements for the lost cached links. These allowed people to see a webpage exactly how Google sees it, including all the edits and changes made. It was used for debugging, news gathering, and even as a VPN alternative.

Admittedly, most of these tasks can be completed through other methods now, and its original intended purpose to provide access to a different version of a page that wouldn’t load is almost completely unnecessary. The Internet Archive links are an interesting replacement that’s a helpful addition to the search ecosystem.