Pages Cached but not in index

[briggidere]

Hi all,

I have one that I am not sure about. I have a clients site that Google has a cache of most of the pages, but on checking them, they aren't in the index.

Is this supplemental or something? I thought if they had a cache of it, the page would show in the index.

Sorry if I am being dumb

[tedster]

That sounds like a very strange anomaly. Fair warning, though - the site: operator is not what it used to be and often omits urls that still are indexed. You will often see urls appear for site:example.com/dirname/ that do not show up for site:example.com

So don't use site: operator results as your ONLY input. You can also just put the url into the regular search box, and remember the inurl: operator, too.

[briggidere]

Thanks for the reply.

I did the site:domain to see what they had in the index.

But then if I copy one of the URL's and paste it into the search box, it "no results found for" and just returns the home page.

[lfgoal]

Somewhat related or not, every url I plug in today does not return a cache, if I plug the url into google with the http:// included. That is, it will find the url in google, but no cache will be available. If I find the url by plugging it in minus the http:// (just with dubdubdub), I can pull the cache.

[arubicus]

Yet another anomaly that I have been noticing with our site for about a year. It is strange and don't know what is going on.

[tedster]

What happens with this query: cache:example.com/filepath

[steveb]

Standard behavoir for many supplementals now for many months.

Nothing to do about it except what you might do with any supplemental... add more links, update the page several times, etc.

[briggidere]

Hi tedster,

When i do the cache:example.com/filename it goes straight to the cached version of the page. Last cache was 24th June, so it's not getting spidered too often.

Steveb: I take it you were aware of this already? It's the 1st time I have noticed this.

[tedster]

Last cache was 24th June, so it's not getting spidered too often.

Everytime googlebot visits does not necessarily result a changed date on the cache server, especially in a timely manner. Sometimes googlebot visits, but the cache server backs up to an even earlier date! The only dependable stat on googlebot visits comes from your own server logs.

[edited by: tedster at 2:25 am (utc) on July 11, 2008]

[steveb]

Yes, this has sadly been the status quo for months... cached but unfindable via any search, even unique strings of text or the title tag.