Google Search is rolling out a change to its About this page/result feature where it includes links to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. This enabling searches to view the previous version of a given webpage.
Google added this feature likely because of the complaints about Google removing the cache link from that feature.
What Google said. “We know that many people, including those in the research community, value being able to see previous versions of webpages when available. That’s why we’ve added links to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to our ‘About this page’ feature, to give people quick context and make this helpful information easily accessible through Search,” a Google spokesperson told us.
How it works. To access this feature, you can click on the three dots near a search result. That will bring up the About this result feature and within there you will be able select “More About This Page” to reveal a link to the Wayback Machine page for that website.
I don’t see this feature yet but it should be somewhere in this panel when it fully rolls out:
Update: Google sent me a screenshot of what the link looks like in the more about this page section:
More details. The Internet Archive is a nonprofit research library that provides and curates a digital archive of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form called the Wayback Machine. Mark Graham, Director, Wayback Machine, Internet Archive wrote:
“The web is aging, and with it, countless URLs now lead to digital ghosts. Businesses fold, governments shift, disasters strike, and content management systems evolve—all erasing swaths of online history. Sometimes, creators themselves hit delete, or bow to political pressure. Enter the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine: for more than 25 years, it’s been preserving snapshots of the public web. This digital time capsule transforms our “now-only” browsing into a journey through internet history. And now, it’s just a click away from Google search results, opening a portal to a fuller, richer web—one that remembers what others have forgotten.”
Why we care. I use the Wayback machine a lot for my research here and for other work related projects. Having quick access to these links in Google Search can be more useful for me and searchers.
This should also help with some of the complaints around Google dropping the cache link but it does not resolve the complaints around seeing how Google sees your pages. But for that, you can use the URL Inspection tool in Google Search Console or the rich result testing tool from Google.