Google Chrome – how to clear a redirected URL cache

When Google Chrome requests a website, e.g. ‘demo.itsupportguides.com’ and receives a redirect response – for example the ‘/cgi-sys/defaultwebpage.cgi’ error page – it caches this response.

Browser level caching is a common practice to speed page load times and you can normally use Ctrl + F5 (or Ctrl + Shift + R) to hard refresh the page – but when it comes to a redirect this is not an option, instead you need to refresh the original page – not the page you were redirected to.

If you get stuck in this situation, first open up a new ‘incognito’ screen and check that the page is now correctly loading – if it still redirects the problem on the server or page still exists.

Once you know the page is working correctly –

  1. hit Ctrl Shift + Delete on your keyboard
  2. under ‘Obliterate the folloiwing items from’ choose ‘the beginning of time’
  3. un-tick all options except for ‘Cached images and files’
  4. and click ‘Clear browsing data’
  5. Once done the cache of the redirect will be gone from the browser (remember – if it still happens the redirect issue still exists on the page or the server)