Google killed off their own cached pages last month and they’re now using IA as a replacement. Free linking is definitely important, but this is Google we’re talking about, and them using IA to save money - this feels a lot more exploitative if Google isn’t funding them in some way.
I had not realized that. They should absolutely be allowed to do it, but it’s super shitty of them to basically offload that cost onto IA.
IA of course would be well within their rights to try and monetize it. Look at incoming traffic that deep links a cached page and has a Google.com referrer, and throw a splash page or top banner asking for donation.
Google killed off their own cached pages last month and they’re now using IA as a replacement. Free linking is definitely important, but this is Google we’re talking about, and them using IA to save money - this feels a lot more exploitative if Google isn’t funding them in some way.
I had not realized that. They should absolutely be allowed to do it, but it’s super shitty of them to basically offload that cost onto IA. IA of course would be well within their rights to try and monetize it. Look at incoming traffic that deep links a cached page and has a Google.com referrer, and throw a splash page or top banner asking for donation.