Google Webmasters Help FAQ

One common question in the groups: “I have a page (…) that has information on it that needs removing from Google’s search as quickly as possible. (…) I have removed all information from the page, and removed all Tags associated with them and re-uploaded the new page. How can I get the cache changed quickly, without just waiting for Google to re-trawl the whole site?”

Dockarl’s response says it all:

You can request a page be removed - head over to Google Webmaster tools and you’ll be given the option there.

Aternatively, you can try to prompt a crawl by getting friends with big sites to link in to your page.

Google has a form to help you to remove the cached version of a page as well as a similar form within your Webmaster Central account.

If you prefer to actively attack the problem and want to promote the page in order to get it re-crawled earlier, you can support that by working on getting good, strong links to the page in question. These links do not have to remain there forever, it is usually good enough just to have the link online long enough for Google to re-crawl the page (this might happen after a day or a week, depending on the number and quality of the links). One way to support the re-crawling of the page is to use a XML sitemap file where you can specify the last-modification-date of your pages. You could even submit a minimal sitemap file with only that particular URL in the sitemap file (along with the new modification date).

For more information:

• How can I remove content from Google?
• Google: Requesting removal of content from our index
• Google Help: Prevent or remove cached pages
• Google Help: How do I use the URL removal request tool?
• Google Help: Why was my request to remove a cached copy of a page denied?
• Google Help: How do I create a Sitemap file?

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