Removing dead (broken) links from Google search results

I occasionally do a site search for Blogger Sentral to check whether my new entries are properly indexed by Google. How do I do a site search? Easy, you can do it too, just type this in Google search box.

site:yourblogurl

Google will search your blog and then display all your blog or site indexed pages.

Last week I noticed a two dead/broken links showed up in the search results page. They are linked to posts I’ve already deleted.

I clicked on them, and this came out. So they are  indeed dead links.

I reckoned I have to remove this search results from Google SERP (search engine result pages), else it will frustrate my potential readers if they were to click on the links. But how do I do that? Okay… as always I answer my own questions here…

It’s like this:

1. Go to Google webpage removal request tool page and sign in to your Google account.
   Update: There is a new URL removal tool, with roughly a similar interface. It can be accessed via Webmaster Tools > YOUR SITE > Crawler Access > Remove URL.
2. Click New Removal Request button. 
3. Enter the URL of the page you want to remove. To prevent mistakes I do this by copying the link from Google search result itself, and paste it into the text box. 
4. Tick the“The page returns a 404/410…” checkbox and click Submit Request button.
   
5. The URL you requested will be listed, with “Pending” status.                     
6. Google will take  a few days to do the work for you. After removal the status will change to “Removed”. 
7. Once “Removed”, you can do a site search again to confirm if the dead link was indeed removed from Google SERP.
8. You can get back the removed url by clicking “Reinclude” button.
9. Enjoy!

For more information on this you can go to How to remove content from Google search result page from Google Webmasters Help.

 

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