The Ultimate Guide to Google Cache Text Strings

We have a client site whose SEO often defies description, along with canonicalization.

We often have to check Google’s cache of various URLs to see what in fact Google is getting, but sometimes when you view the Full Version of the cache it just rapidly reloads like a blinking strobe light. Kind of like this:

And there’s no way to get to the Text-Only or View Source versions of the cached URL as the links don’t stay in place long enough for your cursor to recognize the link and make it clickable.

The good news is there’s a simple way to get the desired view of a cached URL in Google – add text strings to the end of the URL in your browser’s address bar. And here they are in their full Instant Answer/Featured Snippet glory:

How To View The Text-Only Version Of A URL In Google’s Cache

1. Replace the text string at the end of the Full Version of the cache URL with &num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0. For example, here’s the Full Version cache URL for our homepage using a Safari browser with the text string to be replaced bolded:
   http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uEClgfqmc7cJ:www.localseoguide.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=safari
2. To see the Text-Only version, replace the bolded string with &num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0, so http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uEClgfqmc7cJ:www.localseoguide.com/&num=1&strip=1&vwsrc=0.
3. If you want to see what it looks like in different languages, countries or browsers you can add the following parameters to the string:
   &client=safari (or whichever browser you want):
   &hl=en (or whichever language you want)
   &gl=us (or whichever country you want)
   So it would look like http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:uEClgfqmc7cJ:www.localseoguide.com/&num=1&client=safari&hl=en&gl=us&strip=1&vwsrc=
4. You could also just use our free Text-Only Cache bookmarklet for Chrome.

How To View The View Source Version Of A URL In Google’s Cache

1. Replace the text string at the end of the Full Version of the cache URL (or the Text-Only version URL) with &num=1&strip=0&vwsrc=1. You can also use the same browser, language and country parameters as mentioned above.
2. If you want to go back to the Full Version, just replace the text string with &num=1&strip=0&vwsrc=0.

And that’s pretty much it for the basics.