Yahoo results linking to Google's cache

[JS_Harris]

I have a 2 week old website with a section of content that updates several times per day. A no cache meta tag is in place and Google's early indexing of the site does not contain a link to their cache version of the pages. Yahoo, via their Slurp bot, has visited several times and indexed pages as well. The problem is that Yahoo results contain a link called "cache" that when opened lead to a google cache of the page.

This is Google's cache of...

I find it odd to see Yahoo linking to Google cache but what worries me is that the nocache meta tag is ignored by Yahoo. The cache itself does not open on Google.com, it opens with an IP address in the address bar.

Should I be concerned yet or is this likely because the site is new?

[goodroi]

Yahoo slurp was never the smartest bot and has a track record of weird stuff. Since this was two weeks ago has anything new happened?

[not2easy]

A no cache meta tag

If that is the old Pragma meta http equivalent tag, it died with NetScape from what I've read. If the meta is plain robots meta with "index,noarchive" that may or may not prevent caching if you have set Expires for your files. It is supposed to prevent long term caching.

[Robert Charlton]

Yes, not2easy is correct. I saw the title of the thread and thought it should be noarchive. I double-checked, and it is.

This is Google's cache of...

It's not clear why you're seeing this, or why you're not seeing a Google cache, as all engines use "noarchive".

[JS_Harris]

My mistake, I did mean no archive as indicated by others above, the tag was <meta name="robots" content="noarchive"> and has been in place sitewide on all pages since creation.

It's still a problem as Yahoo is still placing a small 'cached' link next to results which opens Google's cache of the page. Over in Google serps there is no cache link at all, as expected.

Clicking on the little link called 'cached' in yahoo serps first goes to "r.search.yahoo.com/*lots of parameters here*" and then 301 redirects to an I.P. address and displays 'This is Google's cache of...'. The I.P. address resolved to Google.

- Google is caching the page but not displaying links to the cache
- Yahoo is not caching the page but is linking to the hidden Google cache

I noticed that it's doing this for all websites if you perform a site:example.com in yahoo and click on the 'cached' link. While odd to link to a competitor I'm more concerned with ignoring my command not to display a cache version of the page.

[piatkow]

Just had a play with that, interestingly when I try to access my payments page from the cache Kaspersky flags it as a phishing site. A direct link to the page is fine.

The payments page is for invoice settlement by card not a checkout.

[anallawalla]

I don't think it could be connected, but Yahoo Australia serves Google results, not Bing. Some artefact of that?

[JS_Harris]

I couldn't tell you what's going on with that other than to say I'm not surprised. There are some odd things going on this past month including a weeks downtime with search console updating followed by a week downtime in analytics updating(for some) followed by a whole lot of little things that make you scratch your head. I was able to increase traffic 20% by removing all images from image search this month to force real 'web' results instead of an image in the 'related images' section, which had the effect of blocking my textual results.

I'm sure we'll find out in hindsight what's going on but for now things are changing if you look closely enough.

[ken_b]

Not sure if I understand the issue.

Just tried Yahoo.com search for one pf my pages that have a meta noarchive and clicking the cache link returns a message saying they can't find the page in the archive.

[JS_Harris]

I just did a 'site:ebay.com' on Yahoo and the cached link points to Google's cache so it's not limited to sites that use a nocache directive.

[bumpski]

Just stumbled upon this also. Yahoo using Google's cache.

[rainborick]

Yahoo has been working with Google (again) since last October, following a dispute with Bing over ad revenue splits. Their use of Google services has been limited so far. Since Yahoo! is in the process of putting its web assets up for sale, things are liable to remain in flux. My only point being that whatever Yahoo! is doing at the moment, it's too much of a moving target to put any significant efforts into trying to adapt.