As an SEO, you’re usually trying to get your content indexed by search engines. But sometimes, you need to do the opposite and remove a page from search results. This might be because a page contains sensitive information, has old or irrelevant content, or is a confirmation page that you don’t want anyone to find.
Removing one or more pages from Google and Bing is easy, but you need to follow a few specific steps.
Google Search Console’s removal report
The first and fastest step is to temporarily remove a page from a search engine’s index. You can do this in your search console account. Look for the Removals report. In the Temporary Removals tab, you can click New Request and enter the URL of the page you want to remove. You can also remove an entire section of your website this way.
That’s not it!
Just because you’ve submitted a removal request doesn’t mean you’re done. A temporary removal only lasts for about 6 months. To make sure the page doesn’t show up in search results again, you need to make some changes to the page itself.
Bing’s Content Removal Tool
Don’t forget about Bing! You can use the content removal tool to remove a page from the Bing index. You just need to provide the URL of the page, select Remove page, and click Submit. Unlike Google, Bing will not let you remove an entire folder at once.
Setting no-index instructions on the page
To prevent a page from being indexed again, you’ll need to add a noindex instruction to the page. This tells search engines not to index that page. There are two main ways to do this:
No-index meta tag
Adding a noindex meta tag to the <head> section of your page will stop search engines from indexing it. This is a simple line of code that looks like this:
<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>
No-index HTTP header
Alternatively, you can set an X-Robots-Tag in your page’s HTTP header. This is a bit more technical and might require a developer. The code would look like this:
X-Robots-Tag: noindex
Alternative ways of blocking access to pages
If you don’t want a page to be available to anyone, not just search engines, you can:
- Remove the page entirely, which will show a 404 error page. Search engines will remove pages that no longer exist from their index.
- Password-protect the page. Search engines will remove password-protected pages from their index as they cannot be accessed by the public.
Optional: Blocking the page in robots.txt
After you have added a noindex tag to a page, you can use your robots.txt file to tell search engines not to crawl it again. This will save you some crawl budget, but it is an optional step.
Important: Do not block a page in robots.txt before it has been removed from the search index. This will prevent a search engine from seeing the noindex tag, and the page might stay in the index.
In summary:
The right way to remove a page from search engines is to:
- Request a temporary removal in your search console.
- Set a noindex tag on the page you want to remove.
- (Optional) After the page is removed, you can block it in your robots.txt file.
What is the difference between a noindex tag and robots.txt?
A noindex tag tells a search engine not to index a page. A robots.txt file tells a search engine not to crawl a page.
Can I use both noindex and robots.txt?
You should only use robots.txt to block a page after it has been removed from the search index. If you use both at the same time, the noindex tag will not be seen.
What is a soft 404?
