Stale response
A cached response whose age exceeds its freshness lifetime.
What Stale response means
It may still be served under defined directives or failure policies.
How CrawlCheck measures Stale response
One finding code measures it. Its share of all scans is computed from the live corpus when this page is served, not typed into it.
| Finding code | Share of scans | Guide |
|---|---|---|
STALE_CACHE_SERVED | 15.1% | Is Cloudflare blocking AI crawlers on your site? |
Every code, its rule and its current rate: the dataset page. Scan a site to see which apply to it.
Where Stale response comes up on this site
- Your cache purge returned 200 and evicted nothingWhat the headers confirm On the stale response we saw x-cache: HIT and age: 8386 — the copy being served was 8,386 seconds old.
Related terms in HTTP, edge and rendering
The delivery layer between an origin and a client: proxies, caches, redirects, status codes and the headers that decide what a crawler actually received.
Content-Language header · HTTP/3 · Alt-Svc · HTTPS DNS record · Link header · content negotiation · Markdown negotiation · Retry-After · Server-Timing · WWW-Authenticate · Allow header · Content-Digest · Origin server · Reverse proxy · CDN · Edge node · WAF · Bot score · TLS handshake · DNS resolution · DNS timeout · Connection timeout · Read timeout · Redirect chain · Redirect loop · 301 redirect · 302 redirect · 307 redirect · 308 redirect · 304 response · 404 response · 410 response · 429 response · 500 response · 502 response · 503 response · 504 response · HEAD request · GET request · Content type · MIME sniffing · Content encoding · Compression · Brotli · ETag · Last-Modified · If-None-Match · Cache hit · Cache miss · Cache key · Vary header · Stale-while-revalidate · Edge redirect · Origin bypass · Response parity · Header parity · hreflang · canonical URL · HSTS · HSTS preload list · Content-Security-Policy · CSP nonce · edge cache · cache split · cache-buster · Cache-Control · Age header · render-blocking resource · payload text share · lazy loading · 404 and 410 status codes
Questions about Stale response
What is Stale response?
A cached response whose age exceeds its freshness lifetime.
How does CrawlCheck measure Stale response?
Through the finding code STALE_CACHE_SERVED, each with a stated rule, evidence bytes and a live share of scans on the dataset page.
Which area of the glossary does Stale response belong to?
HTTP, edge and rendering: The delivery layer between an origin and a client: proxies, caches, redirects, status codes and the headers that decide what a crawler actually received.
← Vary header · Stale-while-revalidate →
See it in the full glossary · 772 terms across 19 areas.
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