What is the difference betwwen google's index and it's cache?

[sett]

I am very confused about google's index and it's cache. Can anybody tell me the difference between them?

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Indexing makes something searchable. It's a bit like the index at the back of a book. All it contains is a reference to the content of a page. Cacheing actually stores the text content of the page. Google uses both index servers and Doc servers, see [google.co.uk...]

There was also a recent, detailed description here [blog.searchenginewatch.com...]

[sett]

Thanks for information.

[g1smd]

The cache doesn't always represent what is in the snippet or vice versa. They can be out of step.

Sometimes Google can have two cached copies, which one you get may depend on the search query.

Cached pages for supplemental results are often one or two years old.