Here’s how Google explains the feature:

Google takes a snapshot of each page examined as it crawls the web and caches these as a back-up in case the original page is unavailable. If you click on the “Cached” link, you will see the web page as it looked when we indexed it. The cached content is the content Google uses to judge whether this page is a relevant match for your query.

Whenever I encounter a search result that isn’t loading when clicked, I try using the “Cached” link. As Google warns, it isn’t necessarily up to date, but it usually reveals what I need: the content that made the page a relevant search result. As great as this feature is, if you click on any of the links within the cached page, Google will automatically try to load the live version, not the cache. If you’re accessing the cache because the site is down, this will likely fail.

Fortunately, I recently read a post on Lifehacker that solves the above problem through the use of a user script called Google Cache Continue Redux. Once installed, it will make a button appear next to all links, when you’re viewing a cached page. This allows you to keep browsing in cached mode, if desired, making the cache feature all that more powerful.

To install the script within Google Chrome, simply visit the page and click “Install”. With Firefox, the same approach is possible; however, you first have to install the Greasemonkey plugin, and restart the browser. Opera supports user scripts as well, but the instructions are a bit longer, so I suggest looking at their documentation.

As an example, consider the following screenshot:

Bing's wallpaper for July 5th, 2009.

Great image – the type of image that makes me want to know more. This brings us to the problem, though. Bing doesn’t actually tell you anything about what you’re seeing – other than the copyright information. They do give you more information if you are using the United States version of the site – but I’m Canadian. Not only that, but they don’t have the same images on the United States version of the site. Essentially, this means I’m stuck trying to figure out what the photo is depicting, by myself. I found a pretty simple, albeit manual solution: looking at the source code of the page. The background image filename is actually prefixed with some text, in this case, “CalabriaCoast”:

http://www.bing.com/fd/hpk2/CalabriaCoast_EN-CA1974044658.jpg

Once you have that name, you’re in business – search for that text on the web, and you’ll likely find some informative pages among the top results. Worse case, if you don’t have anything useful on the first few pages, at least you have a lead to work with. In my experience, once you have that name – you have it all. That is, of course, if the picture is of something unique, rather than yesterday’s photo: “Zebras”. If you were interested in where the zebras were, you’d have to guess based on the photo alone.

Now… as for how to actually find that name – I have a pretty quick process. I’ll explain how to do it here – covering the major browsers – but keep in mind, these methods aren’t very elegant – some of them require the use of developer tools. I hope Microsoft eventually makes this easier for regular users… and while they’re at it, people that don’t live in the United States.

How to Find the Bing Background Filename Using Your Browser

Google Chrome 2

Using Google Chrome

1) Right-click the background image.

2) Select “Inspect Element”.

A window appears with the element selected – notice on the right sidebar, you’ll see a URL that is partially cut off. Hover your mouse over this URL, and a tooltip will appear – revealing the whole thing. You can even right-click it, and copy it from there. See the screenshot.

Internet Explorer 8

1) Right-click the background image.

2) Select “Save Background As”.

A window pops up asking you to save the file. Take note of the name it is suggesting, as that is the name of the background image.

Mozilla Firefox 3.5

Using Mozilla Firefox

1) Right-click anywhere on the Bing page.

2) Select “View Page Info”.

3) Click the “Media” tab.

You’ll see the background listed along with other images. See the screenshot.

Safari 4

1) Right-click anywhere on the Bing page, and select “View Source”.

2) Click CTRL+F, and then type in “.jpg” as the search term.

Cycle through the search results – there should only be three. You will find that one of them is actually background image URL.