FreeYour CMS + Search ConsoleAbout 30 min
Take It Down When Asked
If a person or business asks you to remove something about them, you do it fast, and you remove it from search too.
Why This Matters
The worst mistake is arguing. A business owner who asks to be off your site and gets a fight tells everyone they know. You lose nothing by removing one page. You can lose a lot by keeping it. Take it down first and talk after.
✓ How To Do It
- Make asking easy. Put an email for removal requests in the footer and on any page about a person or a business.
- Reply within two business days. That is a rule you set for yourself, and it works.
- Check the sender is real. A business owner can reply from the business email or call the number on file. A person can confirm in a message you can match to the page.
- Remove the page or the part they named. Do not make them prove why. Remove first.
- Take the address out of your sitemap, your internal links and your llms.txt. Fix any page that linked to it.
- Make sure the old address now shows a not found page, or redirect it to a page that is not about them.
- To hide it from Google quickly, use the Removals tool in Search Console. It hides the page for about six months. For a permanent fix, the page itself has to be removed or marked noindex.
- Reply to confirm what was removed and when. Keep the reply short and polite.
- Log the request, the date, the action and the confirmation.
- If many requests pile up on one kind of page, change the page type or stop making it.
Done WhenA removal log with one entry showing the request, the removal date and the Search Console request.
Reference List
Tips & Pitfalls
- Do not ask for money, a link or a review in return for removing something.
- Do not recreate the page under a new address later.
- If the request is about a photo, remove the photo file from your server too, and not only the page.
