Removing a site from Google's index
-
We have a site we'd like to have pulled from Google's index. Back in late June, we disallowed robot access to the site through the robots.txt file and added a robots meta tag with "no index,no follow" commands. The expectation was that Google would eventually crawl the site and remove it from the index in response to those tags. The problem is that Google hasn't come back to crawl the site since late May. Is there a way to speed up this process and communicate to Google that we want the entire site out of the index, or do we just have to wait until it's eventually crawled again?
-
ok. Not abundantly clear upon first reading. Thank you for your help.
-
Thank you for pointing that out Arlene. I do see it now.
The statement before that line is of key importance for an accurate quote. "If you own the site, you can verify your ownership in Webmaster Tools and use the verified URL removal tool to remove an entire directory from Google's search results."
It could be worded better but what they are saying is AFTER your site has already been removed from Google's index via the URL removal tool THEN you can block it with robots.txt. The URL removal tool will remove the pages and keep them out of the index for 90 days. That's when changing the robots.txt file can help.
-
"Note: To ensure your directory or site is permanently removed, you should use robots.txt to block crawler access to the directory (or, if you’re removing a site, to your whole site)."
The above is a quote from the page. You have to expand the section I referenced in my last comment. Just re-posting google's own words.
-
I thought you were offering a quote from the page. It seems that is your summarization. I apologize for my misunderstanding.
I can see how you can make that conclusion but it not accurate. Robots.txt does not ensure a page wont get indexed. I always recommend use of the noindex tag which should be 100% effective for the major search engines.
-
Go here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=164734
Then expand the option down below that says: "<a class="zippy zippy-track zippy-collapse" name="RemoveDirectory">I want to remove an entire site or the contents of a directory from search results"</a>
They basically instruct you to block all robots in the robots.txt file, then request removal of your site. Once it's removed, the robots file will keep it from getting back into the index. They also recommend putting a "noindex" meta tag on each page to ensure nothing will get picked up. I think we have it taken care of at this point. We'll see
-
Arlene, I checked the link you offered but I could not locate the quote you offered anywhere on the page. I am sure it is referring to a different context. Using robots.txt as a blocking tool is fine BEFORE a site or page is indexed, but not after.
-
I used the removal tool and just entered a "/" which put in a request to have everything in all of my site's directories pulled from the index. And I have left "noindex" tags in place on every page. Hopefully this will get it done.
Thanks for your comments guys!
-
We blocked robots from accessing the site because Google told us to. This is straight from the webmaster tools help section:
Note: To ensure your directory or site is permanently removed, you should use robots.txt to block crawler access to the directory (or, if you’re removing a site, to your whole site).
-
I have webmaster tools setup, but I don't see an option to remove the whole site. There is a URL removal tool, but there are over 700 pages I want pulled out of the index. Is there an option in webmaster tools to have the whole site pulled from the index?
-
Actually, since you have access to the site, you can leave the robots.txt at disallowed -- if you go into Google Webmaster Tools, verify your site, and request removal of your entire site. Let me know if you'd like a link on this with more information. This will involve adding an html file or meta tag to your site to verify you have ownership.
-
Thank you. Didn't realize we were shooting ourselves in the foot.
-
Hi Arlene.
The problem is that when you blocked the site with robots.txt, you are preventing Google from re-crawling your site so they cannot see the noindex tag. If you have properly placed the noindex tag on all the pages in your site, then modify your robots.txt file to allow Google to see your site. Once that happens Google will begin crawling your site and then be able to deindex your pages.
The only other suggestion is to submit a sitemap and/or remove the "nofollow" tag. With the nofollow tag on all your pages, Google may visit your site for a single page at a time since you are telling the crawler not to follow any links it finds. You are blocking it's normal discovery of your site.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Godaddy and Soft 404's
Hello, We've found that a website we manage has a list of not-found URLS in Google webmaster tools which are "soft 404's " according to Google. I went to the hosting company GoDaddy to explain and to see what they could do. As far as I can see GoDaddy's server are responding with a 200 HTTP error code - meaning that the page exists and was served properly. They have sort of disowned this as their problem. Their server is not serving up a true 404 response. This is a WordPress site. 1) Has anyone seen this problem before with GoDaddy?Is it a GoDaddy problem?2) Do you know a way to sort this issue? When I use the command site:mydomain.co.uk the number of URLs indexed is about right except for 2 or 3 "soft URLs" . So I wonder why webmaster tools report so many yet I can't see them all in the index?
Technical SEO | | AL123al0 -
What to do about removing pages for the 'offseason' (IE the same URL will be brought back in 6-7 months)?
I manage a site for an event that runs annually, and now that the event has concluded we would like to remove some of the pages (schedule, event info, TV schedule, etc.) that won't be relevant again until next year's event. That said, if we simply remove those pages from the web, I'm afraid that we'll lose out on valuable backlinks that already exist, and when those pages return they will have the same URLs as before. Is there a best course of action here? Should I redirect the removed pages to the homepage for the time being using a 302? Is there any risk there if the 'temporary' period is ~7 months? Thanks in advance.
Technical SEO | | KTY550 -
Bing indexing at a tiny fraction of Google
I've read through other posts about this but I can't find a solution that works for us. My site is porch.com, 1M+ pages indexed on Google, ~10k on Bing. I've submitted the same sitemaps, and there's nothing different for each bot in our robots file. It looks like Bing is more concerned with our 500 errors than Google, but not sure if that might be causing the issue. Can anyone point me to the right things to be researching/investigating? Fixing errors, sitemap crawling issues, etc. I'm not sure what to spend my time looking into...
Technical SEO | | Porch0 -
If Google's index contains multiple URLs for my homepage, does that mean the canonical tag is not working?
I have a site which is using canonical tags on all pages, however not all duplicate versions of the homepage are 301'd due to a limitation in the hosting platform. So some site visitors get www.example.com/default.aspx while others just get www.example.com. I can see the correct canonical tag on the source code of both versions of this homepage, but when I search Google for the specific URL "www.example.com/default.aspx" I see that they've indexed that specific URL as well as the "clean" one. Is this a concern... shouldn't Google only show me the clean URL?
Technical SEO | | JMagary0 -
Google using descriptions from other websites instead of site's own meta description
In the last month or so, Google has started displaying a description under links to my home page in its search results that doesn't actually come from my site. I have a meta description tag in place and for a very limited set of keywords, that description is displayed, but for the majority of results, it's displaying a description that appears on Alexa.com and a handful of other sites that seem to have copied Alexa's listing, e.g. similarsites.com. The problem is, the description from these other sites isn't particularly descriptive and mentions a service that we no longer provide. So my questions are: Why is Google doing this? Surely that's broken behaviour. How do I fix it?
Technical SEO | | antdesign0 -
Site (Subdomain) Removal from Webmaster Tools
We have two subdomains that have been verified in Google Webmaster Tools. These subdomains were used by 3rd parties which we no longer have an affiliation with (the subdomains no longer serve a purpose). We have been receiving an error message from Google: "Googlebot can't access your site. Over the last 24 hours, Googlebot encountered 1 errors while attempting to retrieve DNS information for your site. The overall error rate for DNS queries for your site is 100.00%". I originally investigated using Webmaster Tools' URL Removal Tool to remove the subdomain, but there are no indexed pages. Is this a case of simply 'deleting' the site from the Manage Site tab in the Webmaster Tools interface?
Technical SEO | | Cary_PCC0 -
Why is my site jumping around in google search ?
Hi I've been trying to get my page up in google results and I was wondering why the constant fluctuation. For example, on one day the pages is nr. 26, the next day it's nr. 65 then jumps back on say 30 and then in a few more days it's going back to 50. What's the logic behind that ? Thanks Cezar
Technical SEO | | sparts1 -
Switching Site to a Domain Name that's in Use
I'm comfortable with the steps of moving a site to a new domain name as recommended by Google. However, in this case, the domain name I'm asked to move to is not really "new" ... meaning it's currently hosting a website and has been for a long time. So my question is, do I do this in steps and take the old website down first in order to "free up" the domain name in they eyes of search engines to avoid large numbers of 404s and then (in step 2) switch to the "new" domain in a few months? Thanks.
Technical SEO | | R2iSEO0