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This post is part of my Today I learned series in which I share all my web development learnings.

If you're publishing content on the web, it's good to know when Google indexed new or updated pages. Today I learned that you can access the cached version (if there is one) right from the URL bar by prepending cache: to the URL. 😲

Example showing how prepending "cache:" to a URL leads to the Google cached version.

A URL such as cache:https://www.stefanjudis.com redirects to the recent Google-indexed version available under http://webcache.googleusercontent.com.

Edit: As it turns out this is a Google Search rather than a browser feature. When Google is your default search engine, the cache: prefix works because it works in Google Search itself. 🤦‍♂️

Google search with the query "cache:https://www.stefanjudis.com"

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About Stefan Judis

Frontend nerd with over ten years of experience, freelance dev, "Today I Learned" blogger, conference speaker, and Open Source maintainer.

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