How to Delete Information From Search Engines
We've all searched our names, images and web content on a search engine and seen something that we wished wasn't there. Fortunately, we have a number of methods available to remove that embarrassing situation from a few search engine records. This works for both your own web content and when you've posted on someone else's website.
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Instructions
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Deleting Your Own Content
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Go in to your website server and add a robots.txt file to prevent a search engine robot from finding your site. Look at the listings of all your sites on your server's Webmaster Tools home page. Click on the site you'll be working with to create the robots.txt file.
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Find "Site Configuration," pick the option of "Crawler Access" and watch for the "Generate robots.txt" option.
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Look under all the options for robot allowance, and allow them all for the time being--blocking all search engine robots could pose other technical problems beyond the scope of this article.
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Consider choosing individual robot disallowances so that you can be more specific in getting your site off a particular search engine. Choose "Action" in your menu and "Disallow."
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Go through the available list of robots and choose which one you want to disallow--for instance, Googlebot.
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Head over to your "Files & Directories" box, and add a slash or "/" there.
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Press the "Add" icon, and your robot.txt file will be placed into your website's code.
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Be sure to save your robot.txt file as a text file and place it right in the main directory with "robot.txt file" in the file name. This way, the search engine robots will be sure to pick it up and honor the code by not scanning your site.
Deleting Your Content on Someone Else's Site
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Understand that removing your information from another site will involve contacting the webmaster of said site. Ask the webmaster to remove your personal information that search engines robots are picking up.
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Contact a search engine directly to request removal from its web and image searches. Google provides a request tool (see Resources) that lets you contact it directly to ask that certain personal information be removed. Bing also provides this service.
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Create a Google account in order to access its removal request tool. Fill out the request form explicitly indicating what you want removed from the search engines. Make sure that it's something pertinent such as personal information that could pose a threat to your security.
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Be patient until you hear back. Know that when Google and other search engines finally approve your request, the information will be removed from their search engine for six months.
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Tips & Warnings
Not all search engine robots will respect your robots.txt file, particularly some of the spamming ones. Nevertheless, know that Google and most of the other major search engines we all use will have their scanning robots understand your code and keep your information off their search results.
