Google Removes the ‘Noarchive’ Meta Tag: What It Means for Your Website

Google has made a significant change that affects how certain pages appear in search results. If you’ve ever used the “noarchive” meta tag on your website, this update is for you. Here’s everything you need to know about this change and what it means for your site.

What Is the ‘noarchive’ Meta Tag?

The “noarchive” meta tag is a piece of code that website owners could add to their pages. It told search engines like Google not to store or show a cached version of the page.

<META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOARCHIVE”>

If you’ve ever clicked on a search result and seen a “Cached” link next to the URL, that was the cached version of the webpage. The “noarchive” tag was used to prevent Google from displaying that cached version, which is a snapshot of the page from a previous point in time.

What’s Changing?

Google has decided to remove the cached link feature from its search results. Here’s what that means:

• The noarchive meta tag is no longer needed for Google because Google has removed the cached feature entirely.
• You don’t need to remove the noarchive tag from your website, but now that Google has removed the cache feature, there’s no longer any value in keeping it. It no longer serves a purpose for Google Search.

Why Is Google Making This Change?

The cached link feature was once a helpful tool for users to see older versions of a page, but Google has removed it for several reasons:

1. Content Is Updated More Frequently: Websites today are often updated more regularly, so cached versions can become outdated quickly.
2. Increased Control for Website Owners: Website owners want more control over how their content is accessed and displayed, and the removal of cached versions allows for this.

With these shifts, Google has determined that the cached link isn’t as useful as it once was, and so it has been removed from search results.

Does This Mean You Should Remove the ‘noarchive’ Tag?

Now that Google no longer supports cached links, the noarchive meta tag no longer serves any purpose for Google Search. Essentially, keeping the tag doesn’t add any value to your site if your focus is on Google’s search engine.

• No Immediate Action Needed: There’s no urgent need to go through and remove the “noarchive” tag from your pages, but it won’t be relevant for Google anymore.
• Other Search Engines: While Google has stopped supporting the cache feature, other search engines and services (like Bing or the Wayback Machine) might still honor the noarchive tag, so you may want to keep it if you’re concerned about cached versions appearing elsewhere.

Example to Understand the Change:

• Before the Change: Let’s say you published a blog post that was updated a week later. Previously, users could click the “Cached” link on Google’s search results to see the original version of the post before it was updated. If you used the “noarchive” tag, you could stop Google from storing and showing that cached version.
• After the Change: Now that Google has removed the cached feature, users can only see the current version of your page. Even if you keep the “noarchive” tag, it won’t make a difference on Google, because cached versions are no longer shown.

Should You Keep or Remove the ‘noarchive’ Tag?

With Google removing the cached feature, keeping the “noarchive” tag no longer adds value to your Google rankings or how your pages are shown in search results. Here’s what you should consider:

• For Google-Only Focused Sites: If your focus is primarily on Google’s traffic, you can safely ignore the noarchive tag because it won’t affect your pages anymore.
• For Sites Targeting Multiple Search Engines: If you care about how your content appears on other search engines, you might want to keep the noarchive tag. Search engines like Bing or services like the Wayback Machine might still use it to prevent caching.

Final Thoughts: No Need to Worry About Cached Links Anymore

With Google completely removing cached links from search results, the noarchive meta tag no longer holds any value for Google. You don’t need to worry about keeping or removing it, unless you’re targeting other search engines that might still use it.

This change also gives website owners more control over their content—users will only be able to see the current version of a page in Google Search, and no previous versions will be stored or shown.