Stupid Google Cache Hack

When I was trying to go back and see if I had any proof about the 101K cache issue (see http://www.researchbuzz.org/has_google_dropped_their_101k_cache_limit_.shtml for details) I found that I still had the cache URL for one of the items I looked at in Mozilla.

And then I looked at it some more, and wondered how static that cache was. I mean, I know a screen shot would have been better, but how permanent was that cache? Could I goof with it?

Apparently I can.

Google caches have very enormous URLs, so I'm going to give you the full cache URL as the initial example and then abbreviate it to the part I'm editing.

Let's start with a page about Ethel Merman (I constantly get her confused with Esther Williams.)

Here's the cache URL:

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:S16lZzKMXcMJ:www.musicals101.com/mermbio.htm+Ethel+Merman&hl=en&start=1

And here's a screen shot of the beginning of the page:

Note that there are only two words highlighted at the top of the cache.

Now, if you stick in a word that's in the page, the Google cache will just go ahead and highlight it on the page. The keywords you'll want to add to are towards the end of the URL, in this case the keywords are Ethel Merman and in the URL they look like this:

mermbio.htm+Ethel+Merman&hl=en&start=1

To change the cache, just add more words to the end of the string of keywords, connecting them with a +. I can add the word her to the cache:

mermbio.htm+Ethel+Merman+her&hl=en&start=1

And you'll see that the word "her" is highlighed. (This doesn't work with some words, though, like the.) Here's the goofy thing, though. You can also add in words that don't appear in the page, and Google will simply say that those words came from sites linking to the page.

So if you added the phrase "Ethel Merman sang a duet with Clay Aiken," the URL would look like this (%22 is a quote encoded):

mermbio.htm+Ethel+Merman+%22Ethel Merman sang a duet with Clay Aiken%22&hl=en&start=1

I can't imagine any practical use for this at all, but I thought it was interesting that it's so malleable.

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