How to Clear the Google Cache of Your Deleted Web Pages
It's frustrating. You deleted the website, the blog, the photo or the sentence and yet people can still view it on the Internet. This is because Google and some other search engines maintain their own versions of millions of Web pages. This is called caching or indexing and it's done so that the pages can be accessed faster. The problem is, these cached versions can persist for a long time.
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Instructions
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Add <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOARCHIVE"> to the page header. This keeps all search engines from caching the page. This is only possible, of course, if you are the site owner. If you are not the site owner, proceed to Step 2.
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Navigate to google.com/webmasters/tools/removals. You can do this step even if you could not complete Step 1.
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Click the "New Removals Request" button. A text box displays.
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Type or copy the URL of the page you want removed into the text box field and click the "Continue" button.
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Select "The page returns a 404/410, or has been blocked by robots.txt or a noindex meta tag" if you completed Step 1. Or, select "Content has already been removed from the page" then type one of the words on the page into the "Terms that have been removed from the page" text box. If you have verified your ownership of the page with Google, you will have more robust choices than these.
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Click the "Submit Request" button. Your request is listed on the "My Removal Requests" page. Return to this page in a few day's time to view Google's response to your request.
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Tips & Warnings
If you are the site owner you can also add a /robots.txt file to the root of your domain. In this file, you can specify exactly which folders, pages, or pictures you do not want displayed by Internet search engines.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit internet image by arabesque from Fotolia.com
