Get Harmful Content Deindexed From Google

How to deindex from Google when one URL is doing the damage

To deindex from Google is to take a specific URL out of the search index so it stops appearing in results. This page is written for the business owner, physician or executive who already has a URL in mind and wants it gone, rather than for someone reading up on the word. If a page about you or your company is showing up for your name and you want it out of Google, what follows is which routes exist, how to tell which one your URL qualifies for, and what is left when none of them fit.

Most people who want to remove content from Google are dealing with two things at once, the page and the search result. Google states plainly that it can only remove things from Google Search results, and that taking something off the website hosting it is a request to the website owner. Those are two different outcomes, so it is worth knowing which one you are buying.

Google also splits requests into two streams. Policy removals cover private, sensitive or sexual content about you and run through Google's own forms. Anything outside those policies goes through the Legal Help Center under the law that applies where you are. Filing in the wrong stream is the quietest way to lose a month.

What Google removes from Search under its own published policies

Each of these is a separate door with its own form, its own evidence and its own outcome. Matching the URL to the right one is most of the work.

• Personal information. Google's policy covers your address, phone number or email, confidential government IDs such as Social Security or tax ID numbers and resident ID card numbers, bank account or credit card numbers, pictures of your signature or ID, private records such as medical records, and confidential usernames and passwords.
• Doxxing. Google will consider a URL carrying your personal information alongside explicit or implicit threats against you, or calls for others to harm or harass you, and a URL carrying a significant amount of aggregated personal information with no legitimate purpose.
• Legal removals. Content you believe breaks the law or your rights goes through the Legal Help Center. Google asks for the specific URLs rather than the site's homepage, asks you to be specific about what on the page is violative and why, and requires a separate notice for each Google product the content appears in.
• Copyright. Google states that its policy is to comply with notices of copyright infringement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, handled through its Copyright Help Center.
• Outdated content. Where a page has already been changed or deleted and Google is still showing the old version, the refresh request asks Google to update the result, and the status appears under Refresh Outdated Content in Search Console. If the live page has already been updated, Google says you do not need to file at all.
• Data protection delisting. The right first recognised in the European Union in 2014 and carried into Article 17 of the GDPR, with versions since adopted in Turkey, Serbia and the Canadian province of Quebec. Google notes that corporations and other legal entities usually have no right to delist content for queries based on their corporate name.

Why the Search Console Removals tool is not the fix most people think it is

The Removals tool only works on a Search Console property you own. If the damaging URL sits on a news site or a complaint forum, the tool has nothing to act on, and Google's own guidance sends you to the outdated content refresh or to the site owner instead.

Even on a site you do own, the tool is temporary. Google documents a successful request as lasting about six months, after which the page can reappear, and describes the tool as one step in the process of permanently removing a URL. Blocking a URL also does not stop Google crawling it.

Permanence comes from the page going away or from a noindex rule on it. Googlebot has to crawl the page to extract the tag or the HTTP header, so a page blocked by robots.txt never gets read and the URL can still show up if other sites link to it. Specifying noindex inside robots.txt is not supported by Google.

An escalation is naming the policy or the law the URL falls under, filing the exact URLs rather than the domain, attaching the screenshots Google asks for so its reviewers can find the content, and running the parallel request to whoever hosts the page.

How long deindexing takes, day by day

Most cases close within 7 to 30 days. Where a legal filing is involved, that filing sets the pace and we say so up front.

• Day 0. Every URL you want gone is checked against what is actually rendering in Google today, and each one is matched to a policy stream, a legal stream or neither. URLs with no route are named before you pay anything.
• Days 1 to 2. Evidence is built per URL. Screenshots, the page as it stands, the identifying detail on it, and any filing or ruling a legal request rests on.
• Days 2 to 5. Requests go in one URL at a time under the reason that matches. A batch filed under one broad reason gets one broad answer.
• Days 5 to 21. Google evaluates. Requests needing more information come back by email, so the address on the form has to be one somebody reads.
• On a result. Google emails you when a URL is removed, and we recheck live search rather than trusting the notification.

What deindexing costs, and when the job becomes suppression

Pricing is per URL and quoted after a free audit of what is currently ranking, because a cached page that no longer exists and a live page on a national domain are different jobs. No result, no charge applies to the deindexing work.

When no policy or legal route fits and the publisher will not act, the honest answer is that the URL is staying, and the remaining work is suppression. Suppression ranks stronger pages above the damaging result so the first page of your name shows something else. It is scoped per campaign rather than per URL, and we do not sell it on a pay on result basis, because Google decides rankings.

Deindexing removes the search result, not the page

Google says this in its own help pages and it is the most misread part of the process. Even after a URL is removed from Search, the content can still be on the internet, and people may still reach it through direct links, social media or another search engine. A successful deindexing changes what a stranger finds when they search your name, and nothing for anyone holding the link.

Under the personal information policy there are also two outcomes. A full removal means the URL no longer appears in Google Search. A partial removal means it no longer appears for any query containing your name or the identifier you asked about, while it can still surface for other searches. Worth asking which one you got.

For URLs that stay, the work moves to what ranks around them. RepBoost is our review collection product, which builds current reviews on the profiles that rank for your name. RepWatch monitors your search results and alerts you when a removed URL reappears or a new one climbs.