How to ask Google to remove old pages that don't exist
-
I have moved a site to a new location. There are a number of pages that date back to 2012 and 2011 and we do not want them anymore. Is there a way to ask Google to remove these pages entirely.
-
Why not keep leave the old page alive in the hopes that some will click on their links? Use a 304 redirect to your new site.
We have hundreds of audiobook titles that have gone out-of-publication. For those who may come upon the original page while searching the web and click on the link we use a 304 redirect to this common page: http://www.audiobooksonline.com/out-of-publication-audio-books-book-audiobook-audiobooks.html
-
Mayank,
If, when you type in the URLs and the server give a response of 404 (page not found) then they will eventually drop out of the index. You may also use your Google Webmater Tools Remove URL tool (under the "Google Index" link) to request removal of the URLS.
-
If you ensure that those pages return a 404 (Not found) response then Google will remove them from it's index in time.
If you want to speed the process up then you can also do this from webmaster tools. There is a guide to removing URLs here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419
It has been said that using the URL removal tools on a lot (read hundreds) of individual URLs might be seen as negative. However if you just have a handful then that would be the way to do it.
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
-
How to make google crawl our repository to make our site rank but make sure users dont go to our repository ?
We have a website that has links to documents related to various sectors. But the challenge is we do not have the documents on the website itself and they are linked to our document repository that has been blocked to google. We have put nofollow and noindex to the repository. Since Google can not read those documents, it has resulted in an impact in our SEO ranking. What would be the best way to make Google crawl the PDF documents in the repository at the same time make it invisible the "repo" not appear in the search engines. Would dofollow and noindex sequence work ?
SEO Learn Center | | PracticalActionDigital0 -
Managing 404 Product Pages
Happy Friday! I'm managing an Ecommerce site that has tons of product pages showing up as 404s. These product pages also have ridiculous query strings. I wanted to know how other webmasters deal with inactive product pages. Thanks!
SEO Learn Center | | JMSCC0 -
Where can I get all of the slides from Mozcon '13? I attended.
I heard several people on the Moz team and on the Speaker list mention that the slides would be available after the conference. Does anyone know where I can find them? Thanks!
SEO Learn Center | | joltz0 -
Off Page SEO Topic
Hi, I want to know a list of off page SEO topics (panda and penguin friendly) what will drive traffic. Can you help me? Al
SEO Learn Center | | bayezid0 -
Wrong Descriptions for Title's on Google SERP?
I put descriptions in for each of my product categories a couple months ago and a few of my category pages rank high. The problem is that most of my category pages have the wrong meta description on the SERP. The descriptions that are shown sometimes have the home page description, which isn't a big deal, but some have descriptions of different products and most have descriptions of sub categories. Below is an example of a subcategory description (specialty feeders) for a main category: Co-matic Power Feeders - Products - Shop Gear Inc <cite>www.shopgearinc.com/products/co-matic-power-feeders/</cite>Specialty Feeders. Specialty Co-matic feeders are built for use on a variety of machines and for specific operations. Shop Gear supplies a variety of specialty **...****Any Suggestions?**Thanks
SEO Learn Center | | kysizzle60 -
Google plus provides dofollow or nofollow backlinks?
I see my webmaster full of backlinks coming from sites like Google.com(plus) Twitter.com(tweets) Stumbleupon chime Scoop.it 1.Are these backlinks follow or nofollow? 2.Follow or nofollow backlinks surely do not pass PR effect but do the nofollow backlink helpful in rank or not?
SEO Learn Center | | csfarnsworth0 -
How do I get google to crawl white papers that displays a form for human visitors?
How do I get Google to crawl white papers that displays a form for human visitors? I have been looking into this and understand that I need to set the form up as a GET form which has been done. Google said they want you to "avoid" forms that require personal information but to what extent do they want you to do that? The form is used as a lead generator so we need to collect information such as name, company name, email, ect.The information we require currently is: Name, Company name, Email, Phone Number and Number of employees. Once a user puts in their information they have access to the rest of the content and they don't need to re-enter the information in so I assume once Google gets past this feature they can gain access to the rest of the content. I understand that I need to have a form that doesn't ask for personal information which is the dilemma. So what should we do to work around this? Is there a solution that will allow me to obtain some personal information while still allowing Google to crawl the pages? Thoughts and any feedback is much appreciated, TJ
SEO Learn Center | | SEO_com0 -
Google's weighting of Page Load speed
Hey, we recently optimised our website page load speed as part of our overall optimisation. Page load speed according to the Google Developers Page Speed test was previously 51 out of 100 and is now 92 out of 100 and this was improved within the last seven days gradually, cached half way through the improvement process. I appreciate this is regarded as only a small part of the whole process, however, I’d be interested to know if anyone has a concrete opinion/proof on whether such a big improvement would actually make a difference to our rankings in the SERPs.
SEO Learn Center | | tdsnet0