Google killed cache links. This has led to unfulfilled demand for new software tools.

Google has officially killed cache links.

This creates a void in the market that could be filled by (drumroll) someone like you, dear indie hacker.

A cache… what?

A "cache link" was a special link to a website in Google search results.

It linked to a previously-saved snapshot of the website as it appeared when Google's bots last crawled and indexed the page:

Once you visited a cache link, you could see usually see a full version of how that page looked just a few days prior, even if it had been changed in the interim, or even if the website was down.

But now cache links are a thing of the past.

Google’s "search liaison" Danny Sullivan confirmed this on X:

“Yes, [cache links have] 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 retire it.”

Why did people use cache links?

Cache links had all sorts of use cases:

• Accessing dead websites. Cache links would show you website even if they'd gone offline.

• Bypassing firewalls or geoblocks. Ever gotten an error that "This page is not supported in your country"?

• SEOs used them for competitor research. For example, some sites would show different results to Google vs. people.

Google has decided to replace the cache links with Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which is not an ideal alternative.

The Wayback machine is on the decline. It recently lost a major lawsuit and I'm seeing it getting worse as time passes by.

All of this creates several interesting opportunities for us indie hackers.

What can you build to fill this gap?

Here are several ideas:

1. A browser extension to get "Cache" back using a different data source.

Bing still has a "Cache" feature (here's an example). You could build a Chrome/Firefox extension that adds "Cache" next to Google's search results and uses a different data source, like Bing.

When YouTube removed the "dislike" button, a Chrome extension appeared that got the button back. That extension now has 5 million users.

2. A tool to help people compare page versions based on the user agent.

This is a use case a lot of SEOs were using Google for.

Create a small tool (e.g. a browser extension) that displays two versions of a web page side-by-side:

1. One where the "user-agent" is a regular browser, and

2. One where the "user-agent" is a Google bot

That way, people can compare what different websites see when optimizing for search engines.

3. A custom "cache" tool.

Create a tool that lets the user enter a domain's URL and then shows the user a "snapshot" of that website from several days ago (and ideally shows or explains how it is different).

Then create an extension so when people search for a keyword and that URL appears, they can easily see the last version.

This kind of tool can be useful for SEOs who are doing competitor research; they can easily see what those competitors changes at specific URLs.

I hope you found these ideas to be useful!