Search engine cache is a

cache Cache, caching, or caché may refer to: Places United States * Cache, Idaho, an unincorporated community * Cache, Illinois, an unincorporated community * Cache, Oklahoma, a city in Comanche County * Cache, Utah, Cache County, Utah * Cache County ...

of web pages that shows the page as it was when it was indexed by a

web crawler A Web crawler, sometimes called a spider or spiderbot and often shortened to crawler, is an Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web and that is typically operated by search engines for the purpose of Web indexing (''web s ...

. Cached versions of web pages can be used to view the contents of a page when the live version cannot be reached, has been altered or taken down. When a web crawler crawls the web, it collects the contents of each page to allow the page to be indexed by the

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

. At the same time, it can store a copy of that page and it is not just one time when the crawler will crawl our

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and W ...

again next time, again it will store a copy of Each web pages and this process goes on. The search engine may make the copy accessible to users in the search engine results. Web crawlers that obey restrictions given in

robots.txt The robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to indicate to visiting web crawlers and other web robots which portions of the site they are allowed to visit. Th ...

or meta tags by the webmaster may not make a cached copy available to search engine users if instructed not to. Search engine cache can be used for

crime investigation Forensic science, also known as criminalistics, is the application of science to criminal and civil laws, mainly—on the criminal side—during criminal investigation, as governed by the legal standards of admissible evidence and criminal p ...

legal proceeding Legal proceeding is an activity that seeks to invoke the power of a tribunal in order to enforce a law. Although the term may be defined more broadly or more narrowly as circumstances require, it has been noted that " e term ''legal proceedings'' i ...

s and

journalism Journalism is the production and distribution of reports on the interaction of events, facts, ideas, and people that are the " news of the day" and that informs society to at least some degree. The word, a noun, applies to the occupation (p ...

. Examples of search engines that offer their users cached versions of web pages are

Google Search Google Search (also known simply as Google) is a search engine provided by Google. Handling more than 3.5 billion searches per day, it has a 92% share of the global search engine market. It is also the List of most visited websites, most-visi ...

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...

Yandex Search Yandex Search () is a search engine. It is owned by Yandex, based in Russia. In January 2015, Yandex Search generated 51.2% of all of the search traffic in Russia according to . About The search technology provides local search (Internet), loca ...

, and

Baidu Baidu, Inc. ( ; , meaning "hundred times") is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products and artificial intelligence (AI), headquartered in Beijing's Haidian District. It is one of the l ...

. Search engine cache may not be fully protected by the usual laws that protect technology providers from copyright infringement claims. Some search engine caches may be equipped with additional functionality such as the ability to view the page as simple unstyled hypertext or its source code, as supported by Google Cache ("Full version", "Text-only version", "View source").

References

Web crawlers Web scraping Internet search engines {{Web-stub