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    4. Trying to get Google to stop indexing an old site!

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    Trying to get Google to stop indexing an old site!

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    • kbates
      kbates Subscriber last edited by

      Howdy,

      I have a small dilemma. We built a new site for a client, but the old site is still ranking/indexed and we can't seem to get rid of it.

      We setup a 301 from the old site to the new one, as we have done many times before, but even though the old site is no longer live and the hosting package has been cancelled, the old site is still indexed. (The new site is at a completely different host.)

      We never had access to the old site, so we weren't able to request URL removal through GSC.

      Any guidance on how to get rid of the old site would be very appreciated.

      BTW, it's been about 60 days since we took these steps.

      Thanks, Kirk

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Martijn_Scheijbeler
        Martijn_Scheijbeler @kbates last edited by

        No worries, let us know if it changes anything.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • kbates
          kbates Subscriber @Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

          Thanks for the tip Martijn,

          I will give it a try and let you know how it goes.

          (By the way, sorry for the slow response. I did not get a notification that I had any)

          Kirk

          Martijn_Scheijbeler 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • kbates
            kbates Subscriber @EGOL last edited by

            Thanks EGOL, that seems to be exactly what is happening to us!

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

              For the past year, Google is having a very hard time forgetting pages.   You can use a 301 redirect, take the files off of the server, and Google will still list the old URL -  but click to the 301 destination.

              kbates 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • Martijn_Scheijbeler
                Martijn_Scheijbeler last edited by

                Hi Kirk,

                Try pinging the URLs of these old pages to Google (http://www.google.com/ping?sitemap=URL/of/file), if you have a list of the pages on the old site that's something that I would try. What could be causing this is that these old pages were barely visited by the crawlers and because of that they're not being picked up yet as being redirected. Basically, by pinging them to Google (a bit of an oldskool technique) you can trigger a crawl of them and hopefully, this will help.

                Martijn.

                kbates 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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