Is there a way to have Google index a page but not cache it?

Question

I see that many popular sites have pages indexed in Google, but when I try to access Google's cache the page isn't there.

How can I go about doing the same thing with my site? I read that you have to make specific settings to the robots.txt file. What do I need to add in that file?

If robots.txt isn't possible, is there another way to disable Google's cache?

Answer 1

You can add a "Noarchive" Directive to prevent Google from caching specific web pages.

<meta name="robots" content="noarchive">

or for just Google:

<meta name="googlebot" content="noarchive">

There is no penalty for doing this.

Here are some typical scenarios to use Noarchive:

• Advertising you don’t want Google to cache.
• Any PPC landing pages you don’t want viewable to everybody.
• Internal documents you don’t want to be historically public.
• Any other sensitive documentation you don’t want a cache history of.