2

Due to a misconfiguration all HTTPS traffic to a specific server showed the wrong content for a while.

Google indexed this content including urls that don't exist in the affected sites.

For example: https://site-a.tld/ and https://site-b.tld/ both showed content of https://site-c.tld/ including urls like https://site-a.tld/something-about-site-c

This problem has been resolved a month ago and invalid urls now give a 410 Gone http response. However Google will still show these invalid pages in their search result for site-a.tld or site-b.tld

Is their any way to get rid of this invalid search results?

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    The simplest thing to do is be patient. If you did your homework correctly, and it sounds like you have, then it will simply take time to correct. Search engines are notoriously slow. Google will have to refetch each and every incorrect page. You can always use Fetch as Google and Submit to Index in Googles Search Console for important pages. Otherwise, my advice is to leave well enough alone and do not worry about it. Easier said than done! Cheers!!
    – closetnoc
    Commented May 19, 2016 at 13:47

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

From official documentation -> https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en

If you have a web page that you just deleted but it is still showing up in your custom search results, and it is very important to you that it does not show up in search results as soon as possible; or if one of your web pages contains inappropriate content and you want to block it immediately while taking it down, you can prefix the URL with a "-" symbol, and submit it in the On-demand indexing using individual URLs section, like this:

-http://www.example.com/outdated.html

Further reading -> https://developers.google.com/custom-search/docs/indexing#on-demand-indexing

Improve this answer
3
  • Thank you for your input. The page you linked contains the following note though: "It will not affect Google search. If users go to google.com to search for the deleted content, they may still get the deleted URLs." I would like to remove if from the search result on google.com as well. Is this even possible?
    – Mark Biesheuvel
    Commented May 19, 2016 at 8:54
  • 1
    the first link was correct, read that. The 'further reading' second link refers to custom search results - something different.
    – user29671
    Commented May 19, 2016 at 11:35
  • 1
    ...and just to confuse matters, the quoted text appears to be from the "further reading" link (ie. "custom search"), not the "official documentation" linked to above.
    – MrWhite
    Commented May 19, 2016 at 11:43

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.