Why isn't washingtonpost.com cached in Google?

[ppzhao]

Why isn't Washingtonpost.com cached in Google? Even the pages that don't change frequently, such as [washingtonpost.com...]

I the pages in washingtonpost.com is getting some rankings, and instead of the snipet of text, it posts the title and description tags in Google SERPs. Even though Google isn't caching those pages, does that mean Google doesn't know anything about what's on those pages except for the Title and Meta tags? Or does it mean Google knows what's on those pages (such as keyword focused content, keywords in h1 tags, etc), but is just hiding the cached version from users because of some kind of "no cache request" from washingtonpost.com's programming?

Thanks,
Paul.

[joeking]

no cache request seems most likely

[catch2948]

Yes. It does sound like no cache, but there is no meta tag indicating no cache, at least none that I can find ...

[jomaxx]

Three possibilities come to mind...

1. The WP used to use that tag but has recently decided that cacheing their pages is OK. Seems unlikely.

2. The WP selectively feeds Googlebot a "nocache" meta tag during spidering, or possibly a completely stripped-down page for the spider (yes, technically this would be cloaking, but Google would probably give the Washington Post a pass on this if it wasn't done for deceptive purposes).

3. My best guess is that the WP's legal department contacted Google directly and asked them not to cache the Post's pages any more. In other words, Google just flipped a switch manually to turn off cacheing for this site. I know this is possible, as I requested the same thing shortly after the cache feature was introduced, and my site is not cached to this day. Believe it or not, it was only about 10 minutes from the time that I called their main switchboard to the time the "Cached" links disappeared, IIRC.

[catch2948]

Heh ... Amazing how quick they can move sometimes. Especially when they get the right "motivation" :-)

[jomaxx]

Ha, well it's not like I threatened to sue them. But I was quite upset at the time because some idiot had been systematically copying my content, and when I banned him he switched to using Google's cache.

I could tell it was happening because I saw the image requests coming in from that IP, with Google's cache as the referrer.

[mycutegoddess]

I have noticed this too and I want to add a little thing that all the results Google are showing right now are completely old URLs. That's happened to my site too.

any thought..