This post was published in 2019 and may contain information, techniques or code examples that are no longer current. Please double-check official documentation and modern best practices before using anything from this article.
From time to time unwanted pages can appear in Google Search Results. Could be a temporary page, old content or even a test page that's made its way onto Google's rankings.
When using a CMS like WordPress or Magento pages can get mistakenly submitted to serach engines, even if they are not linked to by other pages. This is because CMSes build sitemaps to help Google and other search engines properly index a website.
If a page from your website has been included by mistake you can request Google remove it from their results.
- First, make sure that you have remove the page, this process only works if the URL results in a 404 error.
- Load Google Search Console's Remove Outdated Content page
- Either enter the real page URL, or copy the link from Google Search of the page you want removed.
- Click Request Removal
If everything checks out, the link should be dropped from Google Search results within 2-6 hours.
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