If you wish to remove your content using the URL removal request tool in our Google Webmaster Tools, you must first meet the criteria listed below.
To remove a page or image, you must do one of the following:
- Make sure the content is no longer live on the web. Requests for the page must return an HTTP 404 (not found) or 410 status code.
- Block the content using a robots.txt file.
- Block the content using a meta noindex tag.
To remove a directory and its contents, or your whole site, you must ensure that the pages you want to remove have been blocked using a robots.txt file. Returning a 404 isn't enough, because it's possible for a directory to return a 404 status code, but still serve out files underneath it. Using robots.txt to block a directory ensures that all of its children are disallowed as well.
To remove a cached copy of a page, you must either add a meta noarchive tag to the page or change the content of the page. Generally, use the meta noarchive tag if you want the cache removal to be permanent, and change the content of the page if you want the cache removal to be temporary, until we recrawl the page and update the cache with the latest content.
Content removed with this tool will be excluded from the Google index for a minimum of 90 days. You can use the URL removal request tool to reinclude your content at any time during the 90-day period.