I have always been recommending webmasters to sign up with Google Webmaster Tools, here is an excellent reason for the same. Google offers with an option to Remove URL’s from the search engine and this is available directly to the public. This means that anyone can report any web page URL and get it removed if they find it abusive, invalid, broken or offering wrong information. The whole set of information is available under the ‘Removal Section’ of the webmaster tools. The are situations where in some of your pages URL can get changes like removing different languages pages or else information which has expired but still these pages are still listed in the SERPS, hence you need to block these pages and also delete them from your CMS.
To remove a page or image, you must do one of the following:
- Make sure the content is no longer live on the web. Requests for the page must return an HTTP 404 (not found) or 410 status code.
- Block the content using a robots.txt file.
- Block the content using a meta noindex tag.
Here are few tips on how to remove pages & reinclude them in the Search Engine Result Pages :
Remove Web Pages from Google Cache : There are many different reasons where in a person would attempt to remove different pages from the Google indexed page results. This may mainly include shopping pages where in the stock is already empty, error pages, website pages where in the information published is wrong, hence its urgently required to remove all the bad pages from the SERPS and keep the index clean for the searching visitors. Before you plan to remove the page, you need to make sure that it’s completely removed / deleted from the hosting server and cannot be accessed, following which when the URL is accessed it should give a HTTP 404 or 410 error. The dynamic sites don’t really have a web page stored as an individual file which can be deleted, because all the page’s information is stored in the database and when the URL is accessed, they would be displayed. These pages should be blocked using the robots.txt file or using a meta noindex tag.
- Noindex Meta Tag : The noindex meta tag would make Google inform that the page should not be indexed in the search results would not appear in the result pages. Even if you link to those pages, Google will still drop those specific pages, and in case the pages are already appearing, they would be removed from the index whenever they are crawled. For quicker results of this process you need to use the Remove URLs tool option available in the Google Webmaster Tools. Sometimes these pages are not removed even if you have added the no index tag, because Google would not have crawled the page after updating it with the tags, hence its recommended to wait and watch for the results.
To prevent all robots from indexing a page on your site, place the following meta tag into the
section of your page:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex">
To allow other robots to index the page on your site, preventing only Google’s robots from indexing the page:
<meta name="googlebot" content="noindex">
Do make a note that if someone else is trying to remove your website from the Google Search Results, the webmaster tools would automatically reject this request because of your robots.txt information. You can still approve the requests made by others if you also would like to remove those specific pages from the Search Index.
If your site has content you don’t want Google or other search engines to access, use a robots.txt file to specify how search engines should crawl your site’s content. If private or out-of-date content is appearing in Google search results, use the Removal URL tool to request its removal.
The Invalid requests are normally denied with the following message – Your request has been denied because the webmaster of the site hasn’t applied the appropriate robots.txt file or meta tags to block us from indexing or archiving this page. Please work with the webmaster of this site or select an alternate removal option from the webpage removal request tool.
You can directly use this link in order to send a Removal Request to Google for removing any specific web page, but this has to be approved by the website owner.
Pending removal requests will be processed as soon as possible. Successful webpage removal requests will show a status of “Removed” and will be excluded from Google search results for a minimum of 90 days. Successful SafeSearch removals will be excluded from Google SafeSearch results entirely. If your request is denied, click on the “Learn more” link for detailed information about why the removal was unsuccessful.
You can use the same options to reinclude back your web pages onto the search results or else Request reconsideration of your site through this option.
rockstarsharma says
Amit i did that in past. When i have lot of unwanted pages index in google. I found in error in meta tag and description in google webmaster tool. Then i request for removal page in tool. They removed with in 10 days.
Kavya Hari says
From here, i gained a data about URL removal requested tips on here, so i would like to thank you for given a superior information on here, Amit.
Deepanshu says
well i have lot of broken links in webmaster tools…..didnt know how to remove them until this post…thanks 😉
Aisha says
I want to delete cache page from google site. Can you help me out.