Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Technical SEO
    4. Using the Google Remove URL Tool to remove https pages

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Using the Google Remove URL Tool to remove https pages

    Technical SEO
    2
    3
    6679
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • sparrowdog
      sparrowdog last edited by

      I have found a way to get a list of 'some' of my 180,000+ garbage URLs now, and I'm going through the tedious task of using the URL removal tool to put them in one at a time. Between that and my robots.txt file and the URL Parameters, I'm hoping to see some change each week.

      I have noticed when I put URL's starting with https:// in to the removal tool, it adds the http:// main URL at the front.

      For example, I add to the removal tool:-

      https://www.mydomain.com/blah.html?search_garbage_url_addition

      On the confirmation page, the URL actually shows as:-

      http://www.mydomain.com/https://www.mydomain.com/blah.html?search_garbage_url_addition

      I don't want to accidentally remove my main URL or cause problems. Is this the right way this should look?

      AND PART 2 OF MY QUESTION

      If you see the search description in Google for a page you want removed that says the following in the SERP results, should I still go to the trouble of putting in the removal request?

      www.domain.com/url.html?xsearch_...

      A description for this result is not available because of this site's robots.txt – learn more.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
      • sparrowdog
        sparrowdog @TomRayner last edited by

        Thanks so much for taking the time to respond.

        I think I will add the https to WMT and remove them that way.

        I will take a look through the .htaccess file and the creation of the ssl robots file. A while back, it seemed that Google was indexing a lot of my site as https and then the dropped it and went mainly back to http. I will get that sorted to make it clear.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • TomRayner
          TomRayner last edited by

          Hi there

          I'll start with question 2 first as it's a bit easier to answer.  Robots.txt blocks the crawling of a page, but not necessarily indexing.  Of course, if the page cannot be crawled it will be deindexed eventually anyway, but if you're getting that description for one of your URLs, Google has not been able to access it and will stop trying to.  So that is usually enough, although if you want to remove it as well, you can by all means.

          For question 1 - GWT is a bit awkward in the sense that it treats http and https versions of your site as different webmaster properties.  Furthermore, if you want to remove a URL on your site, it will always prefix it with the http/https version of your site, no matter how you enter it.

          If you added another WMT property that was https://www.yourdomain.com - you would be able to manage that domain as well and thus you would be able to remove any URLs under that prefix.

          Incidentally, if you want to block all HTTPS pages from being accessed, you can do that with a special instruction in your htaccess file and robots txt.  You can instruct the Googlebot and other bots to read a specific robots.txt file if they visit an HTTPS URL.  To do that, you would first add this to your htaccess file:

          RewriteCond %{HTTPS} ^on$
          RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/robots.txt$
          RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /robots_ssl.txt [L]

          This command basically says "if the URL has https, read the robots_ssl.txt file".  You then upload a file called robots_ssl.txt to your root domain.  In the txt file you just add:

          User-agent: *
          Disallow: /

          So now, if a bot reaches an https URL, it has to read the robots_ssl.txt file and upon reading that, they are denied access.  That would prevent all of your https URLs from being indexed.

          That might be useful to you, but if you go ahead and use it please take care to backup all your files in case anything goes wrong - your htaccess file is very important!

          sparrowdog 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • 1 / 1
          • First post
            Last post

          Got a burning SEO question?

          Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


          Start my free trial


          Browse Questions

          Explore more categories

          • Moz Tools

            Chat with the community about the Moz tools.

          • SEO Tactics

            Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers

          • Community

            Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!

          • Digital Marketing

            Chat about tactics outside of SEO

          • Research & Trends

            Dive into research and trends in the search industry.

          • Support

            Connect on product support and feature requests.

          • See all categories

          Related Questions

          • MarcelMoz

            Wrong page title in Google

            Hi there, A while ago we took over the domain www.hoesjes.nl and forwarded it to our website www.telefoonhoesjesxl.nl. If you perform a search for the keyword 'hoesjes' in Google then we (www.telefoonhoesjesxl.nl) show up on an organic number 1 position. The problem is that the page title isn't correct. Google shows the page title of the website hoesjes.nl we took over and (correctly?) redirected to our domain www.telefoonhoesjesxl.nl. Does anybody have any idea how to get rid of this wrong page title in Google?
            Here you can find a screenshot of what I mean. Thanks! Marcel

            Technical SEO | | MarcelMoz
            0
          • techdesign

            Is there any benefit in using a subdomain redirected to a single page?

            For example if we have a domain www.bobshardware.com.au and we setup a subdomain sydneysupplies.bobshardware.com.au and then brisbanescrewdrivers.bobshardware.com.au and used those in ad campaigns. Each subdomain being redirected back to a single page such as bobshardware.com.au/brisbane-screw-drivers  etc. Is there a benefit ? Cheers

            Technical SEO | | techdesign
            0
          • renukishor

            How to inform Google to remove 404 Pages of my website?

            Hi, I want to remove more than 6,000 pages of my website because of bad keywords, I am going to drop all these pages and making them ‘404’ I want to know how can I inform google that these pages does not exists so please don’t send me traffic from those bad keywords? Also want to know can I use disavow tool of google website to exclude these 6,000 pages of my own website?

            Technical SEO | | renukishor
            4
          • TopFloor

            How to Remove a website from your Bing Webmaster Tools account

            I have a site in Bing Webmaster Tools that I no longer work on.  I can't seem to find where to delete this website from my webmaster tools account.  Anyone know how (there doesn't seem to be anything obvious under Bing Help or on a Google Search).

            Technical SEO | | TopFloor
            0
          • rahulchowdhury

            Unnecessary pages getting indexed in Google for my blog

            I have a blog dapazze.com and I am suffering from a problem for a long time. I found out that Google have indexed hundreds of replytocom links and images attachment pages for my blog. I had to remove these pages manually using the URL removal tool. I had used "Disallow: ?replytocom" in my robots.txt, but Google disobeyed it. After that, I removed the parameter from my blog completely using the SEO by Yoast plugin. But now I see that Google has again started indexing these links even after they are not present in my blog (I use #comment). Google have also indexed many of my admin and plugin pages, whereas they are disallowed in my robots.txt file. Have a look at my robots.txt file here: http://dapazze.com/robots.txt Please help me out to solve this problem permanently?

            Technical SEO | | rahulchowdhury
            0
          • Websensejim

            Why has Google removed meta descriptions from SERPS?

            One of my clients' sites has just been redesigned with lots of new URLs added. So the 301 redirections have been put in place and most of the new URLs have now been indexed. BUT Google is still showing all the old URLs in the SERPS and even worse it only displays the title tag. The meta description is not shown, no rich snippet, no text, nothing below the title. This is proving disastrous as visitors are not clicking on a result with no description. I have to assume its got something to do with the redirection, but why is it not showing the descriptions? I've checked the old URLs and he meta description is definitely still in the code, but Google is choosing not to show it. I've never seen this before so I'm struggling for an answer. I'd like to know why or how this is happening, and if it can be resolved. I realise that this may be resolved when Google stops showing all the old URLs but there's no telling how long that will take (can it be speeded up?)

            Technical SEO | | Websensejim
            0
          • MaartenvandenBos

            Use of + in url good or bad?

            Hi, I am working on a SEO project for a client.
            Some of the urls have a + between the keyword.
            like www.example.com/make+me+happy/ Is this good or bad for seo?
            Or is it maybe better to use - ? Thanks!

            Technical SEO | | MaartenvandenBos
            0
          • mhans

            Deep Page Link - url no longer exists

            I used Open Site Explorer and found a link to our site on http://www.business.com/guides/bedding-supplies-3639/  The link was setup to go to an important, deep page on my website, but the structure of our urls changed and the url no longer exists. The link (anchor text 'National Hospitality Supply') does direct to our homepage, www.nathosp.com. My question is, am I receiving full link juice? Or would I be better served to create a 301 redirect to the revised / new page url? In case it matters, if I had my choice I'd prefer the link to go to the intended deep page. Thanks in advance for your insight. -Josh Fulfer

            Technical SEO | | mhans
            0

          Get started with Moz Pro!

          Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

          Start my free trial
          Products
          • Moz Pro
          • Moz Local
          • Moz API
          • Moz Data
          • STAT
          • Product Updates
          Moz Solutions
          • SMB Solutions
          • Agency Solutions
          • Enterprise Solutions
          • Digital Marketers
          Free SEO Tools
          • Domain Authority Checker
          • Link Explorer
          • Keyword Explorer
          • Competitive Research
          • Brand Authority Checker
          • Local Citation Checker
          • MozBar Extension
          • MozCast
          Resources
          • Blog
          • SEO Learning Center
          • Help Hub
          • Beginner's Guide to SEO
          • How-to Guides
          • Moz Academy
          • API Docs
          About Moz
          • About
          • Team
          • Careers
          • Contact
          Why Moz
          • Case Studies
          • Testimonials
          Get Involved
          • Become an Affiliate
          • MozCon
          • Webinars
          • Practical Marketer Series
          • MozPod
          Connect with us

          Contact the Help team

          Join our newsletter
          Moz logo
          © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
          • Accessibility
          • Terms of Use
          • Privacy

          Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.