How do I delete pages indexed with Google that are no longer indexed? My site used to have a forum, but deleted it because it wasn't adding anything to the site. When I search my site on Google, results from the forum still come up. Will this eventually change?
It will resolve itself over time. You'll see the results go suplemental and then fade out. A better solution is to 301 those pages so that you still get the traffic for a while.
If the urls are producing 404 status codes, (check your server headers here) you can use the Google Url Removal Tool. If you configured the forum as a subdomain and did not reuse it, it should be easy.
Careful with that. I've read horror stories of whole sites getting removed. Also, it only takes the content out for X days (30? 90? I forget...) and then reincludes it unless you keep "removing" it.
Actually, I think you're wrong here. That would only happen if your pages were indeed still up on the web. After 6 months Google will re-index them if you haven't actually removed them, or taken steps to block Google from indexing them again (robots.txt, etc.) The URL Removal tool isn't really all that scary, though you do have to be careful of what you're doing
I'm using it now, Google removes only urls with 404 error code. And within less than 5 days. It helps when you change page urls, have to remove old pages to avoid duplicate penalty for new urls.
I took down a site 9 months ago and still have pages indexed from it. I didn't really care before because I just parked the domain. However, now I'm re-using the domain for another completely different site and it is annoying. Does the URL Removal tool remove pages permanently? What if you decide to use the same page name in the future?
It says it at the tool's page. The pages are removed for X days and if you want to keep them out you have to reapply. If your content changes by then the spider should just recache the data and correct from there.
All I can do is wish you good luck. I agree with the 301 redirect idea. You may at least get some traffic from old deleted pages if you can. Google's indexing is a complete wack job at the moment. It's been that way for at least two months. I'm still seeing pages in their index that I deleted months ago. I have no idea how to completely remove them from google's index and serps. Some of them are supplemental, some are not. Some pages dissapear from their index, then reappear on different datacenters. So who knows? One thing I do know is that I'm not submitting any deindex/remove/ requests to google. Their spider is SUPPOSED to index webpages and remove those pages that no longer exist. That's the whole point of the damn spider! I don't have to submit requests to Yahoo or MSN to have pages removed from their indexes. We all have enough work today without holding google's hand. Google is a a multi-Billion dollar corporation. Let'em fix their own damn spiders.
I would create a custom 404 error page to redirect those visitors to any page you want them to see. Then, create a 404 redirect, and you are all set. To create a 404 redirect, add this to your .htaccess file: ErrorDocument 404 /NameOfPageYouWantToRedirectTo Example: ErrorDocument 404 / (this will redirect to your home page) ErrorDocument 404 /special.html (this will redirect to a page on your site called special.html) Hope this helps. Adriana