With improvements in web technology, Google deemed the feature no longer necessary.
As an alternative, Google has begun incorporating links to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine in its “About this page” feature, providing searchers with a way to view historical versions of webpages.
Controlling Archiving In The Wayback Machine
The ‘noarchive’ tag doesn’t affect the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine.
The Wayback Machine, which Google now links to in search results pages, has its own rules for archiving and exclusion.
To prevent pages from being archived by the Wayback Machine, you have several options:
Robots.txt: Adding specific directives to the robots.txt file can prevent the Wayback Machine from crawling and archiving pages. For example:
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow: /
Direct Request: Website owners can contact the Internet Archive to request removal of specific pages or domains from the Wayback Machine.
Password Protection: Placing content behind a login wall effectively prevents it from being archived.
Note that these methods are specific to the Wayback Machine and differ from Google’s now-deprecated ‘noarchive’ tag.
Conclusion
As search technology advances, it’s common to see legacy features retired in favor of new solutions.
It’s time to update those best practice guides to note Google’s deprecation of noarchive.
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