Google indexed the demo pages of the WordPress theme from our site. How do I remove them from the Google index?
I have trashed that pages, but on Google search console I still have 186 pages indexed. My site is only a one-page site.
What can I do?
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3Wait for Google to discover that you removed those pages.– Stephen Ostermiller ♦Commented Sep 30, 2016 at 10:35
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1If the pages are gone, leave it alone, they will disappear from the search engine on their own.– closetnocCommented Sep 30, 2016 at 16:29
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it's one month now waiting!– goplasticCommented Oct 1, 2016 at 17:44
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1Did you disallow those pages to robots.txt? If so, you need to let Googlebot crawl them to find out that they are removed.– Stephen Ostermiller ♦Commented May 22, 2017 at 15:19
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1 Answer
It's frustrating to wait, but for that many pages it's probably the best advice. You could use the Google Remove URLs tool to achieve what you want, but be aware that Google says in the instructions they intend for the tool to be used for temporary URL removal from search results. They would prefer you let Googlebot get a 404 return on permanent page deletions. You can read more about it here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1663419?hl=en
If the deleted pages are demo pages, the chances that a human who is not a spammer/hacker will see them in Google AND click on them is very, very small. Just because Google Console sees the pages doesn't mean they rank at all in search results. Still, this might be a good opportunity edit your 404 page for human visitors and add a link to your homepage.
