Getting rid of dead wood on Google?

by Mo Goulet

Posted: 14 years ago 9 replies

I've had this problem with 3 of my clients in the last month. No matter how many videos, articles or updates to their webpages we process, there are listings in Google that just don't go away. Some are old specials, announcements that are outdated and press releases that are irrelevant to what is going on today. It would be nice to populate search results with current stuff.

Is there a secret to getting rid of dead wood on Google?

#dead #google #rid #wood

tylerherman 14 years ago

You can redirect to new pages or no-index them.

I see no reason to keep old sales pages up. You should try to just have a current specials/announcement page(s) and keep that updated instead of making a new page for everything if the content is date sensitive.
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- debra 14 years ago
  
  Add this to your meta tags:
  
  <meta http-equiv="Cache-control" content="no-cache" />
  
  for a static html page it would be:
  
  <meta http-equiv="Cache-control" content="no-cache">
  
  If you use seo-all-in-one plugin, then use that to import it into the pages you don't want cached.
  
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Mo Goulet 14 years ago

That would work if they owned the sites but many of the pages were articles in newspapers and magazines to which they have no control.
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- debra 14 years ago
  
  Originally Posted by Mo Goulet
  
  That would work if they owned the sites but many of the pages were articles in newspapers and magazines to which they have no control.
  
  Oh, sorry. I didn't see this post.
  
  In that case...idk. Seems to be a problem just about everywhere since the updates. I see it all the time now.
  
  I had googled the other day for some info on a current event I heard on the news. All I got was some old geezer crap from 2002. Go figure :rolleyes:
  
  Thanks
  
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  paulgl 14 years ago
  
  Are these web pages? A simple noindex and the next crawl
  should eliminate them.
  
  You could take them down yourself, same thing as above.
  
  You can ask google to take them down.
  
  Or, find them and 301 them, or delete them and do a
  custom 404 page.
  
  You could just find all the ones that are not current,
  change the page to a menu for the main site, briefly
  explaining why the offer is gone.
  
  If these are not "web pages," but text on pages that
  are still there but the text has changed, then you
  have a google crawl problem. Google cares not about
  crawling your page very much, if ever again. That's
  something you need to solve.
  
  Paul
  
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MikeFriedman 14 years ago

You can try to outrank them to knock them down, like you have been doing.

Alternatively, you can contact the owner of the site, explain the situation (that the offer is no longer valid, etc., and you do not want visitors to their site to see stale content any more than they probably do), and offer different content to be posted on the same page that is more up to date or points to a page you control for current offers.
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yukon Banned 14 years ago

Just do a redirect on all the old links pointing at the new sales page.

Keep it simple.
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RevSEO 14 years ago

There's not much you can do if it's on other domains.

One trick, that's not even guaranteed to work, is to get some new/fresh content on those domains and then do a small linkbuilding campaign for them. Since it's new post, and backlinks Google *may* update the old listing with the new one. The problem with that is that it's a cat & mouse game since once the promotion ends you'll need to do the same thing again.
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Theeban 14 years ago

As far as you don't have control over them, you may go for some "negative SEO" on them

OR

Contact their websites and ask to remove it with valid reason given.
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