Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Geek Speak => Topic started by: Igor on 06/11/2007 16:07:13
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How do I delete my website from the Google index ?
It was a simple matter to submit the URL of my site to google, (about a year ago).
However now I wish to delete the listing from Google; this seems far more complicated.
Is there a simple way to perfrom this deletion ?, perhaps a form I can fill in with the URL.
(I have no idea what a "robots.txt file" is, and would prefer not to know if I can avoid it [:D]).
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Robot.txt (http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/norobots.html) is a file that tells spider/robots (these are programs used by search engines to collect data on web sites) that you don't want them collecting data about your web site.
I don't know if google has a policy of allowing you to fill out a form and add that to a private 'do not include' list; but if their spiders are blocked, the site should eventually drop off their list (although old historic references to the site will still exist).
The other problem is that although google is the dominant search engine, it is not the only search engine. All of the reputable one's should process robots.txt as required.
The sledgehammer approach is to look at the HTTP headers you are receiving, and just refuse to honour requests from any of the spiders, or from users referred to you from a search engine (this assumes you have a dynamic web page - you could not do this with a static web page).
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Thanks for the link, it looks like I must learn about this robot.txt thingy.
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How do I delete my website from the Google index ?
There are instructions on one of the Google pages.
If you want to delete your entry from Google's index AND take the site down, then you need to remove the content (so it returns 404 errors) and then choose Google's remove from index option (you specify your now-defunct URL). I guess you have to remove your content first so as to prevent malicious index-removals.
If you want your site to remain present for those-in-the-know, but just not indexed in search engines, then use the robots.txt file as other posters suggested. Google offers info on the format of robots.txt - tis very straightforward.
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you could google instructions for taking it off google. lol
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http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8459
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Removing my content from the Google index
* How can I prevent content from being indexed or remove content from Google's index?
* How do I remove an outdated page?
* How can I ensure my content is eligible for removal from the Google index?
* If I remove my content using the URL removal request tool, how long will it be excluded?
* How can I reinclude content I've removed from the Google index?
* How do I use the URL removal request tool?