11 ms·
Hey Google, I want my cache links back
- guelo 15y agoAnother thing that has been annoying me lately is that it seems like like I have to add a + in front of every word or Google might decide without any indication that it will completely ignore it.
- stfu 15y agoThis is really a problem. I can live with most of the other crap, but this is highly annoying.
- Estragon 15y agointext: and allintext: are useful for this failure, too.
- tomkinstinch 15y agoString literals seem to be ignored now too. ("quoted terms")
- ugh 15y agoNo, they are not. Only if Google can’t find anything – which makes a lot of sense.
- joe_the_user 15y agoNo, In my somewhat brief testing, current Google is simply inconsistent. Sometimes it allows searches for fully quoted terms, sometimes is fails and warns you, sometimes it fails but not warning you... Try: "society of spectacles"
- MaysonL 15y agoeven +"society of spectacles" doesn't do anything different...
- xnxn 15y agoYes, they are. I don't have the example handy, so you'll have to take my word for it. My query was 'sqlalchemy "some quoted phrase"' and the first result didn't contain the phrase anywhere in the page. Out of desperation, I tried a +, and when that didn't work I sent my first feedback to Google.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- ugh 15y agoGoogle couldn’t find anything and striped the quotes away.
- xnxn 15y agoTo clarify, this was only the first result. The others did have the phrase, and it was highlighted in their snippets.
- waqf 15y agoThat has been happening for years. If you click through to the cached version of the result, which is marked up to highlight your search terms, Google provides an excuse: "These terms were found only in links pointing to this page:". I've always had my doubts as to whether they really were found in links.
- rhizome 15y agoOnly if Google can’t find anything – which makes a lot of sense. For me it doesn't, and it violates the Law of Demeter. If there are no results, tell me. Don't make me waste time wondering if any of the results have what I'm looking for, since there is no indication that the results I'm receiving are ancillary. Treating your users like they're idiots is evil.
- patio11 15y agoBut users are, on average, demonstrably ... not as savvy as search engineers as to the optimal way to operate their search engines.
- throwaway32 15y agowell perhaps somewhat understandable, why should i be happy with an inferior interface because of it? This falls very squarely in the category of "not my problem, but you just made it my problem anyways" I see this as part of a big trend towards software and software designers that think they know what you want better than you do, and its an endless source of frustration for me, and im sure many others.
- rhizome 15y agoEven so, we are all forced to use it at that level.
- 5hoom 15y agoCouldn't agree more. No matches _is_ a result. I don't go use a search engine because I must click on a link, any link. I go there to find _relevant_ information. If there isn't any, tell me & I can get on with my day.
- Confusion 15y agoThere usually is a very clear indication right at the top of the page, informing you that the search yielded no results and that it is showing results for a different search.
- 15y ago
- dolbz 15y agoThis is especially annoying as in days gone by if you added + to the query they'd show a message explaining that you don't need to use + as Google only returns results containing all the terms in your query. I wonder when they stopped doing this?
- RobertKohr 15y agoBecause that would lead to the dreaded no results, which google doesn't like to show a user.
- narag 15y agoOh, it's happened to me too. And sometimes it replaces one term with another word with similar spelling but not related at all, the typed term is still in the textbox, but the terms bolded in the summary are different. It started a little after the anti-content-farms changes where applied, so I thought it was some temporary glitch. I haven't seen it recently, but maybe it's because I'm not making complex queries since.
- djeikyb 15y agoThis reason, wanting my search terms respected, is the reason I switched to duckduckgo. The way google completely changes or ignores my search is maddening.
- rachelbythebay 15y agoNow you know why they called it Google Plus. Seriously, though: these are signals that the inmates are running the asylum and it's time to find alternative providers. There are other ways to search.
- kalleboo 15y agoThis has been annoying me a lot too. I remember originally switching to Google mainly because it meant I didn't have to keep pressing + all the time. For the past couple of weeks I've been having flashbacks to 2001.
- pie 15y agoAccurate results for technical topics brought me to Google, and all the extra query formatting that's required these days is somewhat irritating. Another peeve is that the search box on the results page (with Instant disabled) routinely drops input or moves the insertion point.
- jodrellblank 15y agoThe second isn't just a Google problem, all sorts of software with autocomplete / move-the-cursor-for-me items has problems with just accepting what I type and not fucking around with it. Typically breaking backspace, or filling in unwanted trailing information, but often worse.
- jurjenh 15y agoI was going to suggest that google should insert a short "your search [A +B 'C D E'] returned x results" and then follow up with "Searching for [A B C D E] returned y results" to separate the results. Now I think about it, Google is most likely doing this intentionally, to get more data for "natural language search" ie, to infer what people might mean by combining the results, then seeing what people click on to validate the technique. This does mean that intentional input won't work anymore, unless there is a means to turn this semi-semantic search off. Hmmmm... maybe DuckDuckGo would be a suitable alternative?
- sixtofour 15y agoI'm very happy with DDG. Their ! commands are really nice, the red-boxed "this is probably what you want" at the top of the results page is nice, and their habit of identifying sites as "official" is nice. http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hacker+news http://duckduckgo.com/?q=hacker+news
- naner 15y agoAmazon started doing this about a year ago, too. I think search engines are now catering more to people who aren't extremely adept at using search engines.
- 0xABADC0DA 15y agoI think they're trying to make their interface look exactly like Bing so the only way Microsoft can compete is by having better search results. You guys at HN probably don't check out Bing very much, but many of the UI changes in Google were in Bing first... hover over a search result to show more info on the side, image search with just images (details when you hover), infinite scroll on image search, background image on main search page, etc.
- jen_h 15y agoWhich is terrible. I use Bing as a backup for Google when Google fails me (not often), and I just don't like all of Bing's noise, the background graphics, the sidebar stuff, the slow load time, the Facebook Like button (FFS, WHY??), the "Check out our other services!" topbar that keeps the search field from loading until it's finished, ugh. It seems like Google is becoming more Bing-like with each passing day. This is not a good thing. What is great and always has been great about Google (and why, I believe, it's a staple for many of us after over a decade!) is its great results paired with simplicity and fast load time (please don't get me started on Instant Search, it's not a pretty rant). Google Search, be yourself, the self that's kept you as the autocompleted "g" in my URL bar for well over a decade now. Don't go chasing waterfalls. They take forever to load.
- kongqiu 15y agoDuckDuckGo! I'd say the search results are better/less cluttered about 60% of the time, and google or bing are only a !bang away...
- jen_h 15y agoHrm, DDG's Privacy Policy http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html http://duckduckgo.com/privacy.html is enough reason to move over, methinks! Now to move muscle memory from g to d. ;)
- sifi 15y agoI just noticed it yesterday (or maybe the day before). It is really a bummer when you are used to going to a website to use their feature and the feature isn't there anymore.
- acabal 15y agoI thought I was going crazy when I realized the cache links were gone... good to know I wasn't the only one and that they're still there, though hidden (I never click on the preview arrows).
- Maxious 15y agoI thought it was some magical new robots.txt line you could use if you hate people trying to read your content.
- jannes 15y agoJust google for cache:http://www.example.com/ and it will take you directly to the cached site. This is particularly nice in combination with Chrome's omnibar where you just have to prepend "cache:" before the current URL, hit return, and it will automatically show the cached version of the page you are viewing.
- bradleyland 15y agoCool trick. Completely fails at discoverability though.
- ronnoch 15y agoThere's also this addon for Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pag...
- ChuckMcM 15y agoCaches are kind of a touchy subject. I have no information that they are, but I would not be surprised if Google was inexorably moving toward a 'no user accessible cache' policy. The reasoning is pretty simple, people push things they don't mean too, then they 'fix' it, but if the GoogleBot was in the area your 'fix' may not be as durable as you hoped. Recent examples are iPhone 5 leaks on carrier sites, mis-priced sales at Walmart.com, and support sites at HP for products that were going to exist but now aren't. Clearly its not Google's fault that people screw up and they happen to look at the wrong time, but a strict interpretation of Google's mission would suggest that keeping bad pages 'cached' isn't part of it. And while the vast majority of cached pages provide a great service like when HN exposure overloads a web site you can still see the content, Google cannot practically fix every cache page where the owner doesn't want it cached (they might not even know it is) and then fix it. (Yes you can email them to have them spike the cache but how many people realize that?) A couple of the newspaper types went after them claiming the cache was an 'illegal copy' but of course the page didn't say 'no-cache' (which would keep it out of most CDN's as well so its painful). So the cache feature is useful, but not everyone thinks its a good thing. If they have annoyed Google enough, Google may have just said 'screw it, lets get rid of this capability for end users.' But again, that is just speculation based on seeing it get harder and harder to 'discover' that Google has a cached copy somewhere.
- jen_h 15y agoI didn't realize they'd hidden cached pages this way...but here's a data point on human behavior that may be non-optimal for Google: So, yesterday, I searched for something on Google, found what I wanted, went to click Cache and it wasn't there. I didn't think to go mousing over the page...I instead did what any red-blooded search engine user in a hurry would do: I copied the URL, pasted it into Bing, and viewed cache from there. 0_o
- illdave 15y agoOne of the things he mentions here is that some sites don't have a cached link at all - it may be because they're explicitly telling Google not to cache the page. You can do that using the noarchive tag, which looks like this: <meta name="robots" content="noarchive" />
- apakian 15y ago"For the longest time google made good on their promise to keep their search page simple and easy to use. Now, bit by bit the search page is getting more filled up with cruft that you don't need and stuff that you do need gets removed." I completely agree with this...
- jpr 15y agoYour cache links?
- meow 15y agoI haven't noticed this till now and now I'm shocked. I hated the preview so much that I had to use a custom stylish addon script for firefox to block the annoying thing. Now that the cache is moved to preview, I'm stuck between getting annoyed with preview again or losing the cache links :(. I just don't understand what they were trying to solve with all these changes...
- mhoofman 15y agoGoogle is starting to become a lot less minimal. I like their current design direction but as the OP stated in the article the cruft is starting to build up.
- zobzu 15y agoi too dislike the previews. there's a few things that i find useful tho: - timeline - image search - cache (when it was there and working. lately, it didnt work aka it tries to fetch from the server and if its down, which is what i often use cache for, then it fails) hum, well thats it. special search commands used to be cool but they don't work so well now (i mean the filetype stuff and all). and the rest are just bloated reactions to "bing fear" or something
- sp332 15y agoFor pages that are rendered using javascript, the text won't be in the cache. Sometimes clicking the "text-only" link at the top of the cached page helps.
- ugh 15y agoYou don’t use the timeframe option? I use that one all the time, it’s invaluable to me.
- pbhjpbhj 15y agoI very very rarely do a search where I don't timeframe limit it. This makes me wonder why Google insist on hiding that option every time I visit the search page. I guess they want me to go somewhere else unless I'm going to log in.
- sbierwagen 15y agoNow that's a pretty dumb move. If it isn't broken *please* don't fix it. >*please* Does his blog software not allow him to italicize text?
- altrego99 15y agoNot to mention the annoying +1 button after each link. I don't want to +1 unless I visited it, and I don't mind taking the extra step of sharing if I found a webpage interesting!
- mwexler 15y agoThe iPad "Tablet" Google results experience has removed them completely, no instant preview, no "hidden" swipe-to-expose (that I could find). You have to go to the "classic" version, via a link on the bottom of the page, to get them back. The classic version? It's the one we used to have: no instant preview, Cache link present on almost every listing. So, at least on some platforms, the info-dense but useful version is sill around...
- 0x12 15y agoCan you please post the link to your classic version? I'd like to see what happens when I hit that link from a different platform.
- mwexler 15y agoUsing User Agent Switcher on Firefox, I set my UA to iPad and went to Google. The link for the "Classic" version was: http://www.google.com/?hl=en&tbo=d&output=search¬a=1&sa=X&ei=Nj6DTqeHPITMgQeV5pAh&ved=0CAAQyRM http://www.google.com/?hl=en&tbo=d&output=search&... However, when I set my UA back to Default (Firefox), this link did not appear to do anything. YMMV.
- 0x12 15y agoOk, thank you for trying that.
- anon1385 15y agohttp://www.google.com/search?q=test¬a=1 http://www.google.com/search?q=test¬a=1 seems to trigger the 'classic' layout when visiting with an iPad user agent. When visiting with an iPhone user agent 'nota' is replaced with 'nomo' to get the classic layout. Both offer the cache links (they appear to be the same page, at a glance). Sadly they are doing user agent sniffing and those parameters do nothing when I revert my user-agent back to the desktop Safari default. It seems that nearly all Google sites do user agent sniffing to determine what version of the site to serve, sometimes even going as far as to prevent you logging in at all if you aren't using an approved browser [1]. [1] https://plus.google.com/not-supported/ https://plus.google.com/not-supported/
- JonnieCache 15y agoEasily solved with this chrome extension which gives you a dropdown with links to the google cache, as well as The Internet Archive, Yahoo Cache, MSN cache(Bing Cache), CoralCDN, Gigablast, and WebCite. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/coblegoildgpecccijneplifmeghcgip https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/coblegoildgpecccij... or, as others have said, just google for cache:<url>
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- ck2 15y agoGreat extension for firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pages/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/resurrect-pag...
- alain94040 15y agoTo be fair, I suspect that the cache link was used by 0.1% of all users. Even I almost never use it, and I am likely to be a power user.
- brianobush 15y agoI often use cache links instead of going to the actual site since it was faster and your search terms were highlighted in the document. Now it takes a bit of work to get to the cache link.
- decklin 15y ago.vspii { display: none !important; } Will hide the buttons that display the "preview" thing when you mouse over them.
- machrider 15y agoI agree with the author, but a convenient workaround is to use a bookmarklet: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/07/useful-google-bookmarklets.html http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2007/07/useful-google-bookm...
- pasbesoin 15y agoI'm just getting fucking sick of it. This includes supporting a number of "normal" users on Google products. Of course, my/our opinion doesn't count. Nonetheless, Google UI and support (cough) are now actively pushing me away.
- Matt_Cutts 15y agoIf it makes people feel better, I just spent around an hour debating the points from this discussion in my office with other people who work on Google's search UI and search quality. P.S. If people want to leave examples, for example "If I do the search ["society of spectacles"] I get a result which doesn't have that phrase," I'm happy to pass that to people here to debug.
- huhtenberg 15y ago> If it makes people feel better... It depends entirely on the outcome of the debate.
- Matt_Cutts 15y agoI'm just speaking personally, but I'm on the side of most of the folks here. A senior engineer is looking into the ["society of spectacles"] search now, for example. What would be most helpful would be constructive examples of bad queries, bad experiences, or concrete proposals for how to improve Google's results page or results UI.
- nowarninglabel 15y agoIs it concrete enough that getting to the cache is now a series of 3 actions: 1) Hover over result 2) Move mouse to hover over double-arrow (careful don't miss it or you go back to step 1) 3) Click on Cache link Whereas before it was just: 1) Click on cache link. Not to mention the accessibility issues, which I'm asking an expert in the field about now to see how it affects screen readers.
- keeperofdakeys 15y agoI would think this would break most screen readers, as you have to perform a click to get the cache link. If a screen reader didn't understand js, however, then the cache link may still be in the html (but not if it is loaded via javascript).
- 15y ago
- quellhorst 15y agoThis is Google being dumbed down for the average user.
- huhtenberg 15y agoThat's a minor annoyance compared to the changes they made to the search logic. I noticed lately that way too frequently now the first result page contains irrelevant junk unless I resort to using quotes. And even then quoted words appear to be mangled and ignored at will. Complained about it too here, about a month ago, which is when it appears to have started - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2935261 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2935261
- Daps0l 15y agoi also dislike the previews :'( and the cached link was nice and easy, now an annoying extra click, etc. Why oh why? Aaaargh!
- dshearmur 15y agoI was bored so wrote some JS to put the links back. Only works in chrome. As a userscript: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/114144 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/114144 Or as a bookmarklet: javascript:(function(){var c=document.querySelectorAll('a[href*="webcache.googleusercontent.com"]');for(var a=0,b;b=c[a];a++){b.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.parentElement.querySelector("h3.r").parentElement.insertBefore(b)}})()
- pclark 15y agoI used the cache links purely because it hilighted my search terms, just me?
- VinceWilliams 15y agoInstall the Hide Google Instant Previews Userscript in Greasemonkey: http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/90222 http://userscripts.org/scripts/review/90222 Replace one line of code with this: var css = ".vspib {display: none;} .vshid {display: inline; margin-left:7px;}"; You'll get "cache" and "similar" links back. Thanks, bitmap.
- lwhi 15y agoGoogle implement AB testing don't they. They'll probably be back tomorrow - don't worry.
- haasted 15y agoAnother thing I find more annoying with the recent changes is that previously visited links are not marked as such any longer. When searching for the solution to a problem, it is quite nice to easily know which pages have already been visited using a different search query.
- dolinsky 15y agoPreviously visited links show up as the default purple for me in Chrome. Maybe it's due to a particular plugin you have installed?
- haasted 15y agoNo, I tested in three browsers[1] prior to writing my comment, just to avoid getting caught in something like what you suggest. :) The behaviour seems consistent across all three, independent of whether I'm logged into my Google account or not. [1] Firefox, Chrome and IE.
- mdwrigh2 15y agoInteresting. Links show up as purple if visited for me as well.
- sp332 15y agoAre you using the HTTPS Everywhere plugin? Sometimes, the link is HTTP but your browser will go to HTTPS instead, so the original never gets marked as visited.
- itsnotvalid 15y agoMine is still here. (Just don't get me wrong, what I really miss is the "Related" link)
- 0x12 15y agoPhased roll-out? AB test in progress? This seems to have started a couple of days ago.
- itsnotvalid 15y agoIs cache:xxx method still working?
- ars 15y agoThis does not bode well for the employees at google. You get extra features like this (instant preview) when you have too much manpower - you look for things for your employees to do. But if your customers don't want it, and you can't find anything else for them to do then you start reducing the workforce.
- cooperadymas 15y agoWhen Google released Instant Preview they claimed it increases click through rates to a website. This makes me think a good number of customers do want it. Edit: here is the announcement: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/beyond-instant-results-instant-previews.html http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/11/beyond-instant-result... "In our testing, we’ve found that people who use Instant Previews are about 5% more likely to be satisfied with the results they click. "
- chalst 15y agopeople who use Instant Previews are about 5% more likely to be satisfied with the results they click. This sounds too little to justify a UI change that increases complexity.
- abraham 15y ago5% of a billion monthly users is more then enough justification. At Google's scale fractions of a percent are often worth it.
- wladimir 15y agoI don't agree this is necessarily bad. Arguably, "view cache" is a feature for power-users that know what they're doing. Moving the cache link into that pop-up did simplify the user interface in the most common case, in which the user just wants to view the real link. It no longer has to be rendered for every result. IMO it just takes some getting used to that the cache link has been moved. Or are you viewing pages from cache that regularly that the extra clicks/mouse moves are a problem?
- notatoad 15y agoyeah, i can't agree with the author's assessment that this isn't a UI improvement. part of a good UI is to only present the elements that a user needs. they have moved an obscure feature to an obscure location. it amuses me that there are so many people in the comments here complaining both that google has become less minimal, and that they've removed stuff - minimalism is less stuff.
- joakin 15y agoDepends on the users, for example my non-techie partner always clicks on the cache link just because it highlights the words that she searched for on the page. For some people it may be an important move
- cellularmitosis 15y agoYes, yes, yes. I almost always click on the cached link, because the highlighted search terms allow me to find what I'm looking for so much more quickly. This fundamentally changes the way I use the web. Thanks a lot, google :(
- wladimir 15y agoHmm yes I can see it used for that. However, that will only work for simple passive pages. "view cache" is inherently incompatible with pages that render from javascript (or that make extra requests to get the content). These get broken, and as a growing amount of sites is affected this might be another one of the reasons for obscuring the option.
- zackattack 15y agoSearch is just one of those things where power users will always rule, because in an information economy whoever has best access to information becomes dominant, and the copycats follow in order to keep up. So a search engine has to cater to power users.
- wgx 15y agoThe OP raises a wider point: For the longest time google made good on their promise to keep their search page simple and easy to use. Now, bit by bit the search page is getting more filled up with cruft that you don't need and stuff that you do need gets removed. I am getting a hunch (just a vague feeling) that we might be approaching a time where a new, simpler search experience would pick up a lot of users - maybe amongst us HN/early adopters?
- ssp 15y agoI wonder whether they split test these types of things? They probably do, but Google is unlikely to be immune to corporate pathologies, where for example it is politically impossible for some team to leave well enough alone. I suspect that could easily end up trumping split test results.
- petenixey 15y agoI believe they do a tonne of testing, this video from Google is a great illustration of their process: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5RZOU6vK4Q http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5RZOU6vK4Q
- william42 15y agoIsn't Google incredibly famous for their dedication to A/B testing?
- stordoff 15y agoA/B/N testing from what I heard. One of the examples I know of it that they split the users into about ten groups, and very slightly changed the blue hyperlink colour between them. They found that even a slight variation made a difference to the click-through rate.
- xiaomai 15y agoI've had this same experience at work. I've complained about how ugly some features of our sites are on several occasions, only to learn that they are that way because the ugly (version/size/whatever) performed so much better than the others in our tests. Other times the differences are subtle but increase the click-through rate by surprising amounts.
- soitgoes 15y agoI mainly went to the cache link. Getting easy access to the highlighted search terms was so useful.
- hebejebelus 15y agoIf you're on Chrome, check out Google Quick Scroll for that: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/okanipcmceoeemlbjnmnbdibhgpbllgc https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/okanipcmceoeemlbjn...
- fatalerrorx3 15y agoIf the feature wasn't widely used I'm sure that's the reason for it's disappearance...Google has a tendency to make decisions by the numbers, if they don't see engagement with certain features, they get the axe rather quickly