How to Recover a Website Using Google's Cache

If you lost website content and don't have a backup, you can still retrieve content using Google's cache. What is Google's cache? Think of it as Google's backup. When Google examines a page to determine if it matches a search query, it saves a snapshot of the page.

Accessing Google's cache is useful if the webpage you want to view is down, if the owner or host has removed the page, or if the website is running slowly. To retrieve the content of a webpage, you can follow a few steps.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• Computer
• Internet Connection

1. Navigate to the Google website (google.com).

2. Gather all the pages from the target website. To do this, type "site:" (without quotes) and your website address, with no spaces. Then click "Search."

   For example, in the Search field type:
   site:www.yourwebsite.com

   You should subsequently see all of the pages from your website listed.

3. View the cache. The word "cached" is printed next to each webpage. Click the "Cache" link to open a cached version of that page.

4. Save the pages you need.

Tips & Warnings

• Check the date. A cached page is a snapshot of the page from an earlier date. Changes made after that date aren't reflected in the cache.

• The cache won't be available for sites that have not been indexed, and for sites whose owners have requested that Google doesn't cache their content.

• If images have been removed, they may not appear in the cache.

References

• Inmotion Hosting: How to Use Google's Cache to Restore a Web Page

Resources

• Google