Google Has No Cache Of Homepage. Any Ideas Why?

Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi

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Google Has No Cache Of Homepage. Any Ideas Why?

JoeHouse

8:57 pm on Aug 31, 2010 (gmt 0)

Hi everyone

I checked on Google search engine the last date that they cached our homepage and to my surprise I got a message that said:

Your search - cache:YsvdNtW_oNEJ:www.example.com/ - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.
Try fewer keywords.

In the past we always had a cache page on Google but today they said they cannot find one. Any ideas why?

We show up in the search engine just fine and rank well but its odd that Google says that our URL does not match any documents.

If anybody has any information on why this is happening I would surely appreciate your input. Thanks!

underglass

10:35 pm on Aug 31, 2010 (gmt 0)

I am getting this as well. Thanks for posting JoeHouse. Anyone with an answer will be appreciated.

JoeHouse, try to cache other sites. Many are doing the same thing.

drall

11:03 pm on Aug 31, 2010 (gmt 0)

First noticed this about 6 hours ago, after a mini panic attack I realized it was every website I visit. Some cache issue with just homepages going on right now.

Lorel

12:27 am on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

Have you tried it with or without the WWW?

minnapple

1:06 am on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

I often see this with new sites/pages.
Google will list the page as cached, but no data is available for the page.
Generally I see the cached page data appear within less than 5 days after google shows that the page is cached.

incrediBILL

1:37 am on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

Regardless that it's missing, why would you want Google, or any other search engine, to have your cache page in the first place?

It gives visitors more face time on the search engine, less face time on your site, and comes with risks to boot!

Here's a few reasons not to have cache [noarchive.net]

My sites do not permit their pages to be cached, nor does WebmasterWorld allow it's pages to be cached, nor do many big sites allow cache.

It's a BAD IDEA and a BAD PRACTICE to do IMO.

Repeat after me:
<meta name="robots" content="noarchive">

The SE's should be allowed to index sites only, not wholesale republish them without permission which is exactly what cache pages permit.

[edited by: incrediBILL at 1:41 am (utc) on Sep 1, 2010]

drall

1:39 am on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

From my location right now, no caches are showing for any roots of any websites.

Your search - cache:www.yahoo.com - did not match any documents

Including yahoo, microsoft, bing, WebmasterWorld and every other website. Might just be a geo related cache outage.

JoeHouse

1:42 am on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

Our site is 5 years old so that's not the issue. There appears to be a bug. I have taken a look at numerous websites since this happen and I noticed that others have the same problem with no homepage cache page showing up.

When I first noticed it on our site I had a panic attack. Now that I see many others having the same issue I am sure Google will get it fixed.

Atomic

5:52 am on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

One of mine disappeared from the cache for a number of weeks. It was back as of yesterday.

incrediBILL

5:58 am on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

So why does anyone care if their site shows as "cache"?

What value does it provide other than telling you the last day the page was indexed?

Robert Charlton

6:41 am on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

Including yahoo, microsoft, bing, WebmasterWorld and every other website. Might just be a geo related cache outage.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, no home page caches have shown all evening.

topr8

8:23 am on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

i could not ditto incrediBILL enough - this topic is missing the point!

why would you want google/se's in general, to cache your pages - this is so basic i can't understand why most webmasters still allow it

JoeHouse

10:47 am on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

Well in my experience if you did not block your homepage cache from Google that usually meant something was going on with your website. Which of course would be grounds for concern.

I had several friend in the past years who lost their cache homepage and later their website was deindexed.

I was concerned seeing that I did not ask or applied any block of my homepage cache there may be an issue so I though I check and see in this forum if others were having problems too to put my mind at ease.

rowtc2

12:20 pm on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

It will be smart from Google if my site gives 404 error (because hosting) to redirect users to last cached version.

drall

2:04 pm on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

Ok this is still happening, no cache for any homepages for any sites. Oddly enough traffic dropped yesterday 15% at the exact same time this started.

Are you aware of this Google? Did one of your DC's die?

JoeHouse

2:46 pm on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

I think what is happening is any new cache attempt after mid day of August 31 Google is either having trouble recording these homepage cache pages or have decided to do something different after this date.

I noticed websites that have not been cached after August 31 there still remains cache pages for that website's homepage.

The interesting thing here is to monitor those sites that still have cached homepages and see want happens to their page once Google attempts to cache the page after the above date.

Maybe there is going to be a new announcement from Google regarding homepage cache pages?

Maybe a new twist to their algorithm?

netmeg

2:53 pm on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

I have come around to a strong NOARCHIVE position myself in the past year.

1script

4:21 pm on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

My sites do not permit their pages to be cached, nor does WebmasterWorld allow it's pages to be cached, nor do many big sites allow cache.

It's a BAD IDEA and a BAD PRACTICE to do IMO.

This thread had prompted me to actually look at what WebmasterWorld is doing in this regard. I was stunned to see this:

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">

instead of this

<meta name="robots" content="noarchive">

And that's on all forum pages. And yet WebmasterWorld has 880,000+ URLs reported by site:operator and many (most?) are exactly forum pages.

What gives? Would Brett be so kind as to share what prompted him to use the tag in the first place and possibly why hasn't it led to de-indexing of the pages?

netmeg

4:59 pm on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

As far as I can tell, the main forum urls are allowed in, and certainly the user profiles are (mine comes up for 'netmeg', or at least it did) I don't see individual topics indexed (I didn't search very hard)

Google doesn't need to have *everything* just because they want to.

SEOPTI

5:24 pm on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

I just checked the cache of google.com with cache:www.google.com, it shows 29 Aug 2010.

So even their own main page has an old cache.

Robert Charlton

6:14 pm on Sep 1, 2010 (gmt 0)

For those concerned with home page caches, they seem to have returned. At least the several I just checked are there.

oddsod

5:50 pm on Sep 2, 2010 (gmt 0)

incrediBILL, I agree with you on not allowing Google to cache my site, but I still like to sometimes look into the cache of other people's sites ;) and I keep running into the OP's problem quite a lot nowadays - where the cache should exist but Google does a wobbly.

blend27

6:56 pm on Sep 2, 2010 (gmt 0)

200% of what incrediBILL says. I send it thru a header tag. 3 Years or so so far.

Recent Expirience: We had to move the site to a different server farm. Took 6 hours. Google but must of visited in between. Home page dropped out of index for 3 days. 4th day showed up with "cached" link that showed the error as an OP describes. Fifth day, back to normal.