Chris Peters: Web Developer

Yesterday, Google released a new feature under the Diagnostic tab in Google Webmaster Tools called URL Removals. With this tool, you can do 4 different actions to remove URLs from Google’s index and/or cache:

Individual URLs: web pages, images, or other files

Remove outdated or blocked web pages, images, and other documents from appearing in Google search results.

A directory and all subdirectories on your site

Remove all files and subdirectories in a specific directory on your site from appearing in Google search results.

Your entire site

Remove your site from appearing in Google search results.

Cached copy of a Google search result

Remove the cached copy and description of a page that is either outdated or to which you’ve added a noarchive meta tag.

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seo, google, web development, search marketing, marketing, search, sem, chris peters

Improved process with the URL Removal feature

This tool will help save time for both Google and webmasters. Before release of this tool, webmasters had to either add a 301 redirect code, 404 page not found code, or robots.txt disallow command to outdated URLs and wait for Google’s spiders to revisit the site. This process potentially took months.

Now, according to Search Engine Land, the new tool will make this happen in 3 to 5 days. All you have to do is add the 301 redirect, 404 page not found, or robots.txt restriction and report the URL action to the new removal tool.

This is a smart move on Google’s part. Not only are they adding a feature that pleases webmasters like myself, but they are also adding a mechanism that we can use to take part in cleaning up Google’s index. Sure, they’ve got a ton of money to use in purchasing hardware to build their database. But we can help them save money by decluttering their index for them in an expedited manner.

Does it work with 301 redirects?

I’m currently testing to see if the removal tool will act accordingly if you apply a 301 redirect to the page instead of a 401 or 404 code. I’ll keep you posted on the results of this test.