What About Bing And Yahoo
If you have added and verified your site in Bing Webmaster Tools , then you can use it to remove URLs from both Bing and Yahoo.
Log in to the tool, go to Configure My Site -> Block URLs. Then Enter your URL and click Block URLs and Cache.
This tool works similarly to Googles URL removal tool. It is also just temporary, removing URLs for about 90 days.
If you want to remove the URLs permanently, then the noindex tag is the best way to do it.
Remove Old Social Media And Blog Posts
Is it really necessary to preserve what you had for breakfast one morning in 2017 or your review on a now-defunct retail shop near you? Probably not.
We are all responsible for the information we post online, but it does not have to stay there once it is posted. Effort and time are required to comb through old posts, but the result is worth it, and this may also train you to be more selective about the information you share in the future.
How To Block Website From Google Search
This guide will show you how to handle specific situations in Google’s search results. Do you want to remove a list of domains from appearing in search? That’s possible.
It’s even possible to have them labeled. Or maybe you want to remove private information from search results. Check which of these situations below applies to you.
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Exclude A Website From Your Search Results Forever
If there is a specific site that bothers you so much that you dont want to ever see it in Google search results ever again, there is a free Chrome extension that does just that.
Its called Personal Blocklist. Itll add a simple link Block to your search results. You can also import your whole personal blocklist.
Once you do that, the extension will remove selected sites from your Google search results, so you don’t need to see them again.
Believe it or not, back in 2011 this was even a native feature within Googles search results available to anyone.
Hide Your Profile From Search Engines
The default setting allows search engines such as Google to find your Pinterest content and display it in their search results. You can change this setting from your profile page by clicking on the Settings link . The first part of the page is Account Basics. Change the Search Privacy toggle from No to Yes. You may get a prompt that Itll take several weeks for search engines to remove your profile from search results. You can speed up the process with Google using their online tool.
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Google Explains How To Hide A Website From Search Results
Google goes over three ways you can hide a website from search results, and which one you should use depending on your situation.
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Google says the best way to hide a website from search results is with a password, but there are other options you can consider.
This subject is spotlighted in the latest installment of the Ask Googlebot video series on YouTube.
Googles John Mueller responds to a question asking how to prevent content from getting indexed in search, and whether thats something websites are allowed to do.
In short, yes you can, Mueller says.
There are three ways to hide a website from search results:
- Use a password
- Block crawling
- Block indexing
Websites can either opt out of indexing altogether, or they can get indexed and hide content from Googlebot by using a password.
Blocking content from Googlebot is not against webmaster guidelines, as long as its blocked to users at the same time.
For example, if the site is password protected when crawled by Googlebot, it must be password protected to users as well.
Alternately, the site must have directives in place to stop Googlebot from crawling or indexing the site.
Where you can run into trouble is if your website serves different content to Googlebot than it does to users.
Thats called cloaking and is against Googles guidelines.
With that distinction made, here are the correct ways to go about hiding content from search engines.
Lockdown Your Social Media Accounts Or Delete Primary Accounts Entirely
: In the Settings tab, you can download all of Facebook’s information on you.
You should also take the opportunity to lock down your account. In the Privacy tab, you should restrict your posts to ‘friends only,’ limit your past posts, and you can also decide to disallow lookups through your provided email address or phone number.
An important element that shouldn’t be overlooked here is the option to remove your Facebook profile from search engine results outside of the social networking platform.
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How To Remove An Entire Website From Google
The best way to remove an entire website from Google is to add the noindex tag to every single page on the site.
You can also use a free plugin to block the entire site with a password. This should prevent your pages from getting indexed in Google search.
In addition, you can block your site from being crawled by search engine robots by adding this to your robots.txt file:
User-agent: *Disallow: /
How To Remove Urls From Sites You Dont Own
It is much harder to remove URLs from Google if they dont belong to a site that you control.
However, if someone has copied your content, then you may be able to get Google to remove it by filing a DMCA takedown request.
It is best to start by submitting the DMCA request to the web hosting company of the website that is hosting your copied content. Then they will be forced to take it down.
But you can also submit a DMCA request directly to Google using this tool.
In addition, Google has made a detailed guide about removing third-party content on this page.
But unless there is a proper legal reason for it, then it will usually be impossible. Your best course of action may be to contact the webmaster directly to ask for removal.
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Google And Other Search Engines
The Google search engine, among others such as Bing and Yandex, can be used to uncover exactly what information about you is public and what the average person can quickly find out without the need for advanced tools, social engineering, or Open-source intelligence .
Once you know what is online, you can start tackling the problem. Run a quick search of your full name and note any website domains that flag you, social media account links, YouTube videos, and anything else of interest.
- Quick tip: To stop your search queries from being tracked, switch to DuckDuckGo.
Enable Google Safe Search On Your Computer
1. Go to Google and search for something. I searched for piano tuners in New Hampshire. On the search results page, youll see a gear icon over to the right. Click the gear and choose Search Settings.
2. On the Search Settings page, put a checkmark next to Filter Explicit Results. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save.
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Own Site: How To I Get Something Removed From Google Search
Does Google show any information in search results that you dont want publicly visible? Do you control the site? If you can edit the HTML code, add this meta tag into the < head> section of the page that you want to remove from Google:
< meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>
Here youll find more information on blocking search engines from indexing your content.
Please keep in mind that this will remove the information only from Googles search results, and itll take some time for the tag to take effect. Its safer to just remove the page itself or at least add password protection. Password protection may be hard to set up. Still, many web hostings have this feature build-in and accessible from the hostings admin.
Google recently published a video on removing/blocking pages from Google search. Check it out below:
Lock Safe Search To The Strict Setting
You can lock Safe Search to the strict setting if you have a Google account. The lock means search settings cannot be changed without your Google password. This prevents savvy kiddos from removing the filter.
1. On the Search Settings page, change the SafeSearch filters setting from Moderate to Strict.
2. Click Lock SafeSearch then log into your Google account.
3. Click Lock Safe Search and Google will start locking safe search in all Google domains. Youll see the progress and once it reaches 100% youll get a confirmation screen.
Now when you or the little ones perform a search, youll see the colored balls on the results page which indicates the strict filter is in place.
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And If I Can’t Delete Embarrassing Content
Oversharing is never a good idea. However, suppose you have come across embarrassing forum posts or messages that you do not have the privileges required to delete, and the only other option is to contact organizations and webmasters directly?
When you contact them, make sure you include a link to the content you are concerned about, give your reasons, and hope they agree to delete it. However, do not expect an immediate response.
How To Set Safe Search In Google To Filter Out Adult Content
September 20, 2012Jean
Google is the most popular search engine in use on the Internet, and by visitors to this website 90% of you get here from Google . So lets start here next week Ill cover Bing, and then Yahoo. Follow these steps to ensure a child-friendly searching environment for your family.
If you have your computer set up with more than one user account, follow these steps for each user. However, if a childs user account has something like Microsoft Family Safety parental controls enacted, Safe Search is already in place. I would still run through these steps to make sure.
Also, if you use more than one web browser youll need to follow these steps in each browser.
First Im going to show you how to set Google Safe Search on the computer. Then Ill explain how to do the same on a mobile device.
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Google Lets Users Blacklist Sites From Search Results
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To revist this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories.
Google is giving users the ability to block sites that annoy them from ever showing up again in their search results, via a new link next to search results.
The new links will be visible to English users of Google.com starting Thursday and Friday . The change builds on a recent extension the search giant made for users of its Chrome browsers, and signals that Google is listening to the complaints of users that web results are being polluted by low-value content farms.
The move comes just a week after Google introduced a big change to its core search algorithm that was intended to promote high quality sites. But many tech watchers were disappointed that the change seemed to benefit Demand Media, one of the net’s biggest content factories, while punishing many sites that say they create valuable original and user-generated content.
Google isn’t the first to come up with the idea of letting users blacklist sites. New search upstart Blekko has baked that capability in from the start, and has created a technology to let users limit their searches to select groups of sites. DuckDuckGo goes further and simply doesn’t include a number of content farms in its index.
Google says the new system might even eventually change search results for everyone, according to a company blog post.
Dont Remove Just Add A Label
There is one kind of search results that bothers most people – paywalled content. Who wants to see a search result, click on it, and see that you first need to pay to access it. Users are rarely interested in subscribing just to access one article, so this frequently leads to poor user experience.
Download this free Chrome browser extension, which adds a label to all sites with paywalled content in Google search results and Facebook and Twitter.
You can customize the list of labeled domains, so you can remove those that you are subscribed to or add more sites to the list. Since the list is fully customizable, you can even repurpose the extension and label any sites you want
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Find Your Old Accounts And Deletion Options
To find your old accounts, visit Have I Been Pwned, check the lists of connected apps in your Facebook and Google accounts, and if you have a password manager, they will store the credentials of accounts you have used since signing up.
Also: The 6 best password managers
You may have to manually login to each account you want to remove and, depending on the service, delete them from there — or you may have to contact the service provider with the request, such as via email or by submitting a ticket. If you aren’t able to delete your account, remove any sensitive information and if you can change the linked email address, name, and any other identifying factors.
Justdeleteme.com is a helpful directory containing guides to removing accounts from countless online services and a rating on how hard it is to remove: ranging from “easy” to “impossible.”
Another alternative is Account Killer.
Exclude A Website From Search Results Just One Time
If you want to remove a specific domain from a particular search, you can use the site: parameter. Lets say you want to Google , but you dont want to see any search results from neilpatel.com.
Your search will look like this:
technical seo -site:neilpatel.com
Site: means you want to search within a said domain. – sign means you want that site to be excluded from search results.
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The Most Permanent Measure
Starting from scratch may seem extreme, but it could be worth considering in some cases. The outright deletion of email accounts, social media, and e-commerce services won’t immediately destroy all data or search results connected to them, but it will, over time, make them less likely to appear.
Just make sure that before you take this irrevocable step, you have backed up any data that you want to keep, such as irreplaceable photos you have uploaded to social media or document scans stashed away in your email inbox.
Use Google Search Console
Its easy to remove URLs belonging to a website you own using Google Search Console.
If you havent already, then you need to start by submitting and verifying your site.
Google Search Console really is a must-have tool for managing your sites appearance and performance in search.
Heres how to remove a URL using Google Search Console:
This will remove the URL from Google search for about 90 days. It will also remove the URL from Googles cache.
Your URL should show as Pending for removal, but you can easily cancel your request by clicking Cancel.
Keep in mind that this method is only temporary! If the URL is still live on your site after 90 days, then Google will probably add it back to the index and start showing it in the search results again.
To permanently remove a URL, use method #2 or #3.
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Enable Google Safe Search On A Mobile Device
In my opinion the best way to block adult-oriented content on a mobile web browser is to use a kid-safe browser. On iPod touch and iPad you can restrict the default Safari browser, and install an alternative browser that already filters out adult content. Choose from these kid-friendly browsers for iPod touch.
Other mobile devices, phones, and tablets may not have the same selection of kid-safe browsers. If thats the case, follow these steps to enable Strict Search in Google on a mobile device. Note that on the mobile site you cannot LOCK the setting. Thats why I recommend the kid-safe browsers.
These instructions and screenshots are using an iPhone, but should work about the same on an iPod touch or other mobile device.
1. Go to Google.
2. Scroll down and click Settings.
4. Scroll down and click Save. .
Compare the search results before and after.
Give it a go then leave a comment and let me know how this worked with your before and after searches!
How To Delete Yourself From Internet Search Results And Hide Your Identity Online
Go incognito.
There is now a very thin line, easily broken, which separates our physical and digital identities.
Social networks have evolved from the days of MySpace to valuable, data-slurping machines that have information on everything from our friends and family to our voting habits.
When you apply for a new job, many employers will try to find and evaluate your social media presence to ascertain if you are a suitable candidate. Advertisers will scrape publicly-available information on you, your social profiles, and your search history for targeted marketing.
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Block Access To A Website Completely And Get Boost In Productivity
Some apps and extensions prevent you from accessing selected sites for a preset time. For better productivity, of course.
You can try Block Site extension for the Chrome browser or try one of the hard to bypass apps – for example, Cold Turkey is one of the most popular.
But these apps dont block sites from appearing in search results but prevent you from accessing them.