How to Remove a URL From Google Search
Can you delete old webpages that still show up on Google?
Old webpages that keep appearing on Google search can be frustrating for business owners. Your beautiful new website (hopefully created using a web design packages from Digital Box Designs), is live, linked on all your marketing channels, and you’re not looking back.
Except that when you do a Google search for your business, services, or products, you still see old webpages showing up. Those pages link to outdated content, warnings about "content missing," or 404 error pages. What should you do now?
Finding your old URLs on Google
Want to see all of your error pages or old webpages? Or are you unsure if you even have old webpages?
Go to Google and type site:yourwebsiteurl. You’ll see a complete list of every page that’s visible (a.k.a. indexed) on Google.
Here’s an example:
Click on each link to see what shows up. Do you get 404 error pages or do you see old content? You’ll want to delete those webpages from Google, so your customers won’t see them in search results.
How to easily remove your old webpages from Google
Requesting removal of old webpages is simple. Follow these steps:
Log in to your Google Search Console account
At left, click “Removals”
Under “Temporary Removals,” click “New Request”
Paste in the URL you’d like to remove
Click “Next”
How to make URL removal requests permanent on Google
Now that you’ve requested the temporary removal of your outdated webpages, you’ll go into the backend of your site to permanently remove those pages on Google.
Log in to your site and use page settings in your content management system to hide, delete, or password-protect those old pages. Once you have successfully hidden those pages, resubmit your sitemap in Google Search Console.
It can take some time for Google to “forget” your pages. But once Google can no longer see your pages, it will remove them permanently from the index, and they won’t show up in search results.
