Google Webmaster Central
Being good web engineers and technologists we know that the easiest way to save our content from being indexed by Google or other search engines is to use a robots.txt file and set a bot crawl restriction. But what to if you have some content already enlisted on some of the big search engines and now due to some privacy reasons you want to remove it from the search engine list?
Google Webmaster Central Official Blog brings us the answer to it simple and easy. Google has introduced a new tool for Webmasters called the URL Removal Tool
The specialty of this new great tool is that it will help webmasters remove already indexed pages sites and directories from Google search database so they can keep it private. The new URL Removal Tool can be found in your Google Webmaster Central Account at the bottom of the left vertical navigation.
Removal of Content from Google
This new tools allows Webmasters to remove mainly four categories of content from Google index namely:
- Individual URLs: You can remove standalone URLs from Google search database e.g. web pages, images or other indexed files
- Entire Direcotry or Subdirectory: This will allow you to remove all files inside a directory or subdirectory that is already listed in Google
- Entire Site: This will keep your site totally hidden and will not be included in Google search results
- Cached Copy: This helps you remove the cached copy of a page that is now outdated or no longer exists
A complete set of instructions on how to use the URL Removal tool can be found on the Official Google Webmaster Blog
Benefits of URL Removal Tool
Here are some benefits of this great new tool:
- Update your cached Google page
- block access to restricted system resource directories
- un-index important files
- Hide your web software system files and scripts
- Maintain Privacy and Security
Requesting Removal of Content You Don't Own
You can also request the removal of content that you do not own thanks to the Webpage Removal Request tool
Preview
Here is a preview of how the URL Removal Tool looks like:
