: How to notify Google about expired content? We run a classified ad website. When the users delete their ads, they want the indexed page removed instantly from Google. We have seen 2 complementary

@Jamie184

I am going to assume that there is one page per ad at some point and that there are pages that categorize and list ads.

With that, do what I do, blank the page- sorta. When the ad is deleted, make the public facing page something obvious; "sold", "ad removed", etc. but you can make it a useful landing page too. For example, more bicycles for sale and list a few. From there, you can update the page with a mechanism that alerts Google not to index the page such as <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> Otherwise, remove the page and tell Google that the page is gone with a 404 or 410 (preferred) error. Of course you can do both, take the first option for a while to capture and salvage valuable traffic then remove the page after a short period.

Noarchive is not the same as noindex. It just means do not create an archive copy. With noarchive, Google would still index the page, however, with noindex, Google will not only not index the page, but also remove the page if it exists, and not archive the page as well.

Using the indicates that the page was modified. There would be an assumption that the page still exists if you modify this date. But if you are trying to indicate the page is removed, unfortunately sitemaps do not have a mechanism for that. The best you can do is just remove the page from the sitemap. However, that should be a very easy mechanism to create.

Other than that, there is nothing to do but to wait. Google uses a TTL (time to live) style of mechanism to know how often to visit a page or site. If your site is modified often, then the TTL is small meaning that it is likely that Google will find the changes fast and update the index rather fast. You cannot make Google come to Muhammad.

Vote Up Vote Down