Proud Geek

I *KNOW* you have experienced this at times: something newsworthy happens, and you visit a certain website or blog and it is either down or gone. Maybe it’s down because of technical difficulties or because too many other people are trying to view the same webpage. Or maybe it’s gone because the news story or blog post has been moved or deleted.

If enough time has passed (which is pretty short for a blog post), you can view a cached version of that webpage. Yahoo and Google will have added that webpage to its index and will have made a cache of that page.

Here’s how to view the cache of a webpage that’s down or gone. I’m using DrudgeReport.com as an example — there are times when people hear of breaking news and rush to that website — and then that website might perform slowly or poorly. But this can be done for just about any website or blog.

1. Go to Yahoo or Google.
2. In the search box, enter either the URL address (i.e., Drudgereport.com) or a few keywords (Drudge Report breaking news)
3. In the results, find the one that’s relevant to what you want.
4. Don’t click on the link to the result you want. Instead, click on the “Cached” link next to it.
5. Ta-da, you’re looking at the cached result of that webpage or blog post.