Missing Cache - very strange

[CouponCactus]

Anyone have experience with a cache going missing from a page that had a cache in the past? We’re overhauling a page and noticed the cache was gone from Google results. We don’t know if this event is good/bad/doesn’t matter but I am curious why this happens. I am positive the cache was missing before we updated the page today because a programmer mentioned they did try checking for a cache for a historical load time prior to today for a different project. I have attached two screenshots to illustrate two things:

1)      What google delivers for a cache: of the page instead of the normal cache page

2)      Even though you can see a cache of any of the indexed pages we have from a serp, the cached link is missing in serps for the mentioned page

Has anyone seen this before?

thanks!

IhnAf SL8ax

[Daylan]

I noticed this a little while ago too, it lasted for a little over a week but eventually showed up again though. I looked around for feed back on it to see why and came across a couple of instances (a little more elaborate than what I was experiencing albeit), but this post talks about it a little:

http://www.ghacks.net/2011/05/07/google-search-new-layout-style/

It's possible you or your results might be part of a test case for a new google release. Were you logged in? Maybe try from a different IP see if the results are the same...

Dunno, if that helped at all, but just something that might put your mind at rest a little.

[RyanKent]

This is normal Google behavior. If you attempt to search for a page's cache using the "cache:" prefix, then if Google does not have the cached page but does have the page indexed, they will share the normal search result.

[CouponCactus]

Thanks.

[CouponCactus]

Thanks for taking the time to respond. I was logged in but I also had three other people (different IPs) check the search and we all received the same result. We all also had &pws=0. One of my concerns and one reason we adjusted the page was page size. Did the page you have in mind have a large page size or a long load time?

[Daylan]

no, not to large, it was the third most popular page behind the homepage. Whole page size is around 3mb.