How To Remove Content From Google - An Overview

If a particular site's webmaster wants to remove the content which is appearing in the Google search results, then there can arise two scenarios:

a) The content which is required to be removed is appearing under a particular user's website. The user is the webmaster in such a case who can easily remove the content.

b) The content to be removed from Google search results is appearing in some other website, whose webmaster is someone else.

Now, how to remove the content in the later scenario ?

Experts from Google announced the ways to remove the inappropriate content through their official Google blog. According to them, the first step to remove such content is to approach the website owner where the content to be removed is appearing. The webmaster is asked to remove or block the content which is appearing in the Google search results.

Once the request has been placed, and confirmed, Google search results are cross checked to see whether that particular page has been removed from the search list successfully or it is still appearing. If the webmaster has removed that particular page, then a “404 Not Found" message or a "410 Gone" message should appear as a result of Google search. Generally, there are two options used by the webmaster to remove or block a selected page from the Google search engine results:

1. That specific page should be disallowed in that website's robots.txt file

2. That specific page should contain noindex metatag.

Once any of these two conditions is fulfilled, a request to Webmasters Tool to remove that page and the content from appearing in the search results could be submitted. The option for the “Webmaster has already blocked the page" is to be selected for such a purpose.

Now, another scenario can arrive wherein the webmaster of the other website claims that he has removed the page, but still that content is appearing in the Google search results. This may happen because of the fact that the webmaster has not removed the page technically. To check out if the page still exists despite of its removal, below activities can be performed:

1. Checking the robots.txt file of that website to see whether that page has been disallowed or not. The code should look like

User-agent: *
Disallow: /blocked-page/

2. By opening the source code of that particular webpage and then checking whether the noindex metatag has been added in the Head section of the HTML code. If added, the code should appear like:

Besides these, as a webmaster the user can also download the Firefox add-on called Live HTTP Headers. With this add-on, request for any URL can be made in Firefox to determine whether the HTTP response is 404 Not found or 410 Gone.

Once it is confirmed that the requested page has been removed from the webpage, a request for Cache removal from the Google webmaster tool can also be made. This will ensure that the Google search results do not display this page in its search results. Webmasters should choose the link” “Content has been removed” option to accomplish this.

Alongside, if it appears that any webpage or content which is being displayed under the SafeSearch results is inappropriate and should not have been displayed along with other SafeSearch results, then again a request could be submitted to remove such content. To request for the removal of such offensive or inappropriate content, the “Inappropriate content appears in our SafeSearch filtered results” option could be chosen in the webmasters tool.

For more information on the removal of inappropriate content from search results, a visit to Google's official blog, GoogleWebMasterCentral is of great significance.

Want to acquire top positions for your targeted keywords on Google and Yahoo? Contact SEO India Company, Profit By Search, Today!