Sometimes you let Google index those pages in search results that you do not want to publish. Now to remove your own content from s search results, you need to decide which content you want to remove and accordingly follow some instructions which are as follows:
If you want to remove the entire page from Google search results :
- Click the desired site on the Home page of Webmasters Tools.
- Click Google index which is set on the left-hand menu on the Dashboard.
- Here you see an option “Remove URLs”. Click on it.
- Click on “New Removal Request”.
- Enter the URL which you want to remove and then click on “Continue”. Keep in mind that URLs are case sensitive, so use the same capitalization and characters which the site’s URL has.
- Now you will get an option of “Yes, remove this page”. Click on it.
- Click on “Submit a request”.
The important thing you should take care is to ensure that the entire page is permanently removed. For this you have to do one out of the following otherwise the entire page again reappears after some time in search results:
- If the page is removed from the server then ensure that it shows the 410 (Gone) or 404 (Not Found) HTTP status code. Other files that are not HTML files should also be wholly eliminated from the server.
- If you find that page still exists then make use of robots.txt to avoid the crawling of Google. Even if the URL is not supported by robots.txt, pages can be indexed if its URL found on another site. However, Google support doesn’t block the page which is blocked by robots.txt and you will get a request of removing the URL of the page Technical Names For Digital Marketing Companies.
If you want to remove the cached version of a page :
When a page is updated or removed, Google also update-index and cached version of webmasters when they next crawl it. Till then, the cached version has the same original and old content which is appeared in Google’s search results. However, you have the option of removing the cached version of your web page. For this follow the given instructions given below:
- Click the desired site on the Home page of Webmasters Tools.
- Click Google index which is set on the left-hand menu on the Dashboard.
- Here you see an option “Remove URLs”. Click on it.
- Click on “New Removal Request”.
- Enter the URL which you want to remove and then click on “Continue”. Keep in mind that URLs are case sensitive, so use the same capitalization and characters which the site’s URL has.
- Now you get the option “remove a cached version of this page”. Click on it.
If you want to remove your whole site or a directory :
One of the best ways to ensure whether the entire site or a directory is removed from Google’s search results is to make use of robots.txt which helps in blocking the crawler to access the directory or a site. You should use it soon after or before sending the request of removing the directory or site. Follow the instructions given below to remove it from Google’s search results:
- Click the desired site on the Home page of Webmasters Tools.
- Click Google index which is set on the left-hand menu on the Dashboard.
- Here you see an option “Remove URLs”. Click on it.
- Click on “New Removal Request”.
- Enter the URL which you want to remove and then click on “Continue”. Keep in mind that URLs are case sensitive, so use the same capitalization and characters which the site’s URL has.
- Now you will get an option of “Remove directory”. Click on it.
- Click on “Submit a request”.
The important thing to take care of is that make use of the URL removal tool only if you want to remove a page urgently because of containing some confidential matter. Don’t use it for other purposes; otherwise, it can cause some problems to the site.
If you want to remove an image from Google search results :
To remove an image from Google’s search results, you need to have the exact URL of it. Follow the instructions given below to find out the exact URL of an image:
- In the image search results click on the image you want to trace.
- Now do right-click full size or view the original image and copy the URL.
- Once you are ready with the exact URL of an image, follow the instructions which are given for “removing an entire page”.
Learn more on the Google support page about how to remove your own content from Google.
Matthew Anton has expertise in organic SEO. He likes to write articles on ethical search engine optimization strategies to help people.
According to me, a blog posted by Amit Singhal on Google’s new board is the main reason and a cause of confusion in understanding Hummingbird. That blog post has focused more on the knowledge Graph, to Google Now, and to many other apps that leveraged that right understanding of ambiguously worded queries.
