Getting Your Pages Deleted from Google's Cache

Here's a Google feature that not too many people know about. Say you had a web page that was (perhaps mistakenly) exposed to the Internet on a web server, and Google found and indexed this page. Sure, you can take the page down or put the offending machine behind your firewall, but what do you do about the copy of the page that Google happily continues to display from its cache?

It turns out that there is a solution to this problem, but it's not very well documented by Google, and few people know about it. Google has a "Remove your URL" page here:

http://services.google.com:8882/urlconsole/controller

that you can use to request that a page be removed from the Google cache.

You'll need to have (or set up) an account to log in, and verify that you have the right to modify files on the website in question. There are a few options to choose from, one of which is "Remove an outdated link". To accomplish this, you'll need to set up a 404 error page at the URL to be removed, submit your request, and wait "3 to 5 days" for it to be processed.

Many feel that this feature should be prominently mentioned on Google's contact and security pages. We agree.