Hello, everyone, I am having a website with about ~150,000 pages indexed, which I no longer want Google to keep in its database, because of them becoming not valuable anymore to visitors as they contain outdated information and need to be removed - instead I gonna be publishing new pages with more recent information. The question is: What is the best way to inform Google he really needs remove those pages from its index? I thought of just removing them, and Google would remove them from index after receiving 404 error on next visit, but I'm not sure if Google wouldn't get suspecious there is happening something wrong with my website. But in fact this is what I need - to remove them ultimately. Another problem is, it will take some time until Google revisits all the pages and removes them. It would be good if we could remove pages just like sitelinks from inside Webmaster Tools. Maybe there IS a way to inform Google about it through Webmaster Tools or something like that? I have xml sitemaps for all those files. What do you think?
I would NEVER remove content from google even if outdated but you can remove it with your robots.txt file cheers
Actually, I did suppose someone would say that . But I have really valid reasons to remove those pages, and ultimately I have no problems with indexing new pages, so that's really not a problem. Just need to know how to do it right and fast.
That is a huge task either way you report to google or do a 301 but i would reckon you to go for 301 instead. i know it will take a lot of time but one other ways is reduce the number of pages by introducing fresh content and directing many urls to fewer urls with new content. i hope it helps.
Actually, I am re-building whole the website and its structure, so for correct order of things I need them all removed . It was a hard decision for me, but "I did it!" I've just found some really helpful information at https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=59819&hl=en and I think I'll go for 410 Gone. This is actually what I need and Google would understand what's happening correctly. Looks like I've got a lot of job to be done now
You can remove those pages and place there 404 page. The other way is give a redirection to old page with new ones. Or disallow that all pages/folder in robots.txt
You will find the detailed information here google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=164734&rd=1
If you use Google webmaster tools then you will find that there is an option by which you can remove a URL from the search index. Just put forward a request in which you have added the URL of the page you want removed and then remove it. google will take the desired action and the page will show no more.