Google has rolled out new tools to help people quickly get content removed from its search engine. Those targeted at site owners allow for speedy removal of pages and cached copies of pages. Other tools allow those to request the removal of images or links to pages with personal information about themselves, in the right circumstances. More on the tools and various options are covered below.

Site Owner Removal Options

For site owners, the best way to keep content out of Google is by using the robots.txt or meta robots tag options. Either option can prevent pages from getting into Google or get them removed once included. However, getting pages removed once in can take time. You have to wait for Google to revisit the pages you’ve flagged for removal, a process that can take days or longer.

The new site owner tools can be found within Google Webmaster Central, for those with verified accounts (That’s explained more here, and it’s free and easy to do). Once logged in, select the site you want to remove pages from via the “Dashboard” screen. When that site loads, choose the “Diagnostics” tab, then select the “URL Removals” link you’ll see in the left-hand navigation.

That will load a screen up with four options, allowing you to remove:

• Individual URLs (a particular page, image or anything with a specific URL that’s listed in Google)
• Directories: (all pages within particular sections of your site, such as within the /about/ area)
• Entire Site: (want to wipe out your entire site? Go ahead!)
• Cached Copy: (want a page to be listed, but not have a copy of it cached anymore?)

Removing URLs

To remove individual URL, directories or your entire site with the new tools, you must block crawling of these using either the robots.txt or meta robots tag options. Alternatively, if the page, pages or entire site are physically gone from the internet — returning 404 “not found” or 410 “gone” error codes – then the tools can also process the request.

To remove a URL, you enter that URL. Up to 100 can be entered at a time using the form (if you want do more than this, submit the first 100, then start again with a fresh form). To delete directories or entire web sites, you enter the directory path or the web site address using separate forms.

After submitting a request, the deletion will go into a processing queue. You can monitor the status of any request using the “Current Requests” tab of the URL Removals screen. Requests in progress are flagged as “Pending.” Those removed get flagged “Removed” and appear on the “Removed Content” tab. If there’s a problem, a “Denied” message appears, with a link to explain more about what problem needs to be corrected.

How long to process a request? The tool should act on any valid requests within 3 to 5 days or faster.

How long will removals last? For six months, once processed — and regardless of whatever you do on your web site during that time, unless you specifically ask for reinclusion.

For example, say you remove a page from your web site, then ask for the page to be removed from Google using the removal tool. Two weeks later, you put the page back up. Google will still continue to follow the original instructions, not to include the page, even though it exists.

During the six month period, you can rescind a removal request. Simply find any removal action you’ve done listed on the Removed Content tab, then select the “Reinclude” option that should show.

After the six month period, Google will resume including or excluding content as normal — IE, looking to see if you have a robots.txt or meta robots tag barrier in place, to prevent valid pages from getting in. If you want pages kept permanently out, don’t put them back online without the proper restrictions in place!

Removing Cached Pages

By default, Google listings have a link to the actual web page as well as a cached copy of the page. Cached pages are where Google will show a searcher a copy of the page that Google saw without the searcher having to go to the actual web site. This is handy for searchers in cases where a page might no longer exist. However, site owners might not want these cached copies to exist at Google.

The meta robots tag provides options to keep cached pages out, but the new tools give you speedier access for removal. As with removing URLs, the tools at Webmaster Central will get rid of a cached copy within 3 to 5 days.

To process your request, Google needs to see that a meta robots tag set to “noarchive” is now on the page (see Meta Robots Tag 101: Blocking Spiders, Cached Pages & More for more about this). Put that tag on the page, push submit, and you’re set. Well, you will be set from around 3pm Pacific time from April 18 onward. There’s a bug still being worked out for this part of the new toolset.

What if you can’t put the tag on a page? I’ll explain more how this works in the third-party section below.

The cached page will be kept out for six months. You can ask for the cached copy to be reincluded sooner than this, if you want. However, make sure Google has actually revisited the page since you altered it. Unfortunately, this means watching your logs. To be safe, you’re probably better off not asking for the reinclusion before the six months have expired.

Want to keep the page or any pages from being cached permanently? Again, use the meta robots tag.

Finally, keep in mind that using the removed cached pages option will also remove any description of the page in the listings. In contrast, the meta robots tag gives you the ability to remove just the cached page OR the description OR both, if you choose.

URL Removals Options: At-A-Glance

I’ve written earlier about a similar Yahoo tool for removing URLs (Up Close With Yahoo’s New Delete URL Feature) plus options with all the major search engines to remove page descriptions and cached copies (Meta Robots Tag 101: Blocking Spiders, Cached Pages & More). Below is an at-a-glance chart I’ve used with both those previous articles, now updated to add in the Google options.

Explanations:

• Stops Crawling: If “Yes,” the page won’t be spidered at all. If “No,” the page might get spidered, but it will not be included in listings.
• Stops Index Inclusion: URLs will not show up in response to searches.
• Stops Link Only Listings: This is where a page is listed with only a title and URL. Yahoo calls these “thin” listings; Google calls them “partially indexed”.

Third Party Removal Options

What if you want content removed from Google on pages you do NOT control or maintain yourself? There’s a special removals tool you can use, as long as you have a Google Account of any type.

What can you remove? Not a lot using the new tool, if you haven’t worked with the site owner themselves.

Third Party Page Removal

Let’s say there’s some page (or image) you don’t like on a web site. You’ve contacted the site owner, and they’ve agreed to pull down the content. Unfortunately, you still see it showing up in Google’s listings. Ideally, the site owner could log into Google Webmaster Central, use the site owner tools I’ve covered, and get the page removed. But they don’t want to do this.

The third party tool lets you do it for them, or for any page that’s no longer live on the web or now banned from crawling using robots.txt or the meta robots tag. You simply enter the URL of the page in question and submit. If it’s a valid request (again, the page is no longer live or being blocked from crawling), it will be removed in 3 to 5 days. You can also log in to see the status of your request.

Site owners — don’t freak out over this! Someone can’t remove your pages from Google unless you actually take them off the web or prevent blocking. This simply speeds up the removal process.

In fact, the ability for a third party to trigger a change isn’t new. Google’s long had an automatic URL removal tool that anyone could use to trigger page removals. In fact, when WebmasterWorld blocked spiders from hitting the site back in November 2005, several people used that tool to get pages removed faster than Google would have done following its usual schedule.

That tool remains for the moment, but Google says to use the new tools for faster processing and better reporting.

Third Party Cache Removal

What if the page remains but just part of it has changed — and you want Google’s cached copy to reflect this? There’s an option for that, too.

For example, say you’re Joe of Joe’s Diner. Someone reviewed your fine eatery and wrote a three word review: “Joe’s Diner Sucks.” This review upsets you. You contact the site owner, and they agree to remove it from the page. Unfortunately, it can still be seen by anyone who looks at Google’s cached copy. You have to wait until whenever Google gets around to refreshing its copy of the page for that review to go away (which could take awhile, see Squeezing The Search Loaf: Finding Search Engine Freshness & Crawl Dates for more on that).

As explained, the site owner could help by getting the cached page removed entirely. But if the site owner doesn’t want to do that, you can use the third-party tool to make it happen.

First, check to see if at least the site owner has at least put on the required meta robots tag to prevent caching. If so, submit the page, and the request will be processed.

No tag? Here’s the alternative. Submit the URL, then find some of the words that have been removed (such as “diner sucks”). Enter these words into the “Term(s) that have been removed from the page” box of the Cached page removal form. Submit, and Google checks the page. It sees the words are gone, it knows the page has changed and processes the request to remove the cached copy.

Site owners — DO feel free to freak out over this! You should.

To be clear, anyone can wipe out your cached pages in Google for up to six months using this third party tool even if you have NOT yourself used the required meta tag.

No big deal? Who cares about cached pages being gone? Remember, it’s not just that your cached page will go. The description for your listing will disappear, too.

Frankly, I don’t think Google should have launched this feature this way. I think it is ripe for abuse.

For its part, Google says the old tool actually operated the same way for years and has never been abused. IE, the feature isn’t new, it’s just getting new attention as part of the new toolsets. Google says it will watch more closely to prevent abuse such as I’ve outlined. The company’s official statement:

Google’s always encouraged consumers to work directly with a site’s webmaster when they have concerns about content in our search results. When the webmaster has removed or changed information on the live page, but that information still exists in our cached copy, we’ve worked with consumers to review and help expedite the removal of outdated cached copies appropriately. Where consumers previously reported these outdated cached copies via online contact forms, they can now do so via the tool. The same precautions and considerations are still observed; with the launch of the new tool, the means by which a consumer can report an outdated cached copy has changed. We’ll monitor requests through the new tool and make adjustments as necessary.

Personal Info Removal

What if the site owner won’t remove or modify a page. Then you can get the page removed if shows or contains:

• Your social security or government ID number
• Your bank account or credit card number
• An image of your signature
• Explicit content which violates Google’s guidelines and contains my personal information.

What’s that last one all about? Well, say someone scrapes your name or business name and shoves it onto a page of porn content. The porn’s the “explicit” part and your personal information — well, that’s your name, Google says. Google will act to get rid of that page, and no one will be the sadder for it.

Other Removals

That third party removals tool also provides options for anyone to delete dead links in Google or report pages or images that have slipped past the SafeSearch adult-content filter.

In addition to that, this page at Google lists other types of content removals you can request, such as listings in Google Blog Search or transcoded pages in Google Mobile. Google’s DMCA page also covers how to remove content that might be violating your copyright.

Author – Danny Sullivan. source : searchengineland.com

When I tried it I could not get it to work, so I cannot confirm or deny that this is true. Below is the screenshot that was available from Search Engine Roundtable to give you an idea of what to look out for.

I read about this over at Search Engine Land.

If you are lucky enough to see take a screenshot and leave a comment with a link to the image so we can all take a look.

If this does not motivate you to get a favicon, I don’t know what will.

Blogger Favicon Showdown

I wanted to do something fun this week and let you decide which popular blogger has the best favicon.

Shoemoney

Shoemoney’s favicon is a scaled down version of his logo and it shows up really well considering the small size of the favicon. It certainly helps to brand his blog.

Problogger

Problogger’s favicon changed when he got the blog design redone last year. The new logo and favicon complement each other and help with the his branding. You can easily see the P and the Ubuntu style circle and dots on your address bar or tabs when you are on the Problogger site making it easy to find in the tabs when you are looking for it.

John Chow

John Chow’s favicon is a picture of half of his face. Considering the small size and how little space there is the favicon does appear to resemble him. I would guess there was a little Photoshop work done to make his favicon appear that clear but they did a good job. I am a little surprised it does not match his blog more, but in many ways his face is his logo.

Daily Blog Tips

Daniel Scocco runs Daily Blog Tips a popular blogging tips blog. The Daily Blog Tips favicon clearly draws its inspiration from their blog name taking out the DBT. Considering the small space it works not to bad, although it does appear to be a little blurry to me.

Now it is your turn. Vote in our poll and help determine which popular blogger has the best favicon!

How to Add Your Favicon to Blogger Update

Google/Blogger broke the instructions in the previous post about how to add your own favicon to a blogspot blog by adding some HTML that referenced the Blogger.com favicon instead. Fortunately the fix for this is relatively simple. Here is what has happened.

Blogger.com has added their own HTML to the templates near the top referencing their favicon. It looks like this if you look at the source code.

<link href='http://www.blogger.com/favicon.ico’ rel=’icon’ type=’image/vnd.microsoft.icon’/>

The instructions on How to Add Your Favicon to Blogger in step three says to add your own HTML code referencing your favicon right below the <head> tag. The web browser however will use the last reference so the Blogger.com favicon code was coming later on. The fix for this is to place your favicon code just before the closing <head> tag that looks like this: </head>.

Your code referencing your custom favicon then overrides the Google/Blogger.com code for the favicon and your custom favicon will return.

I tested this on the Free Favicon Blogspot blog and the favicon has returned. Give it a try on your Blogspot blog and let me know if it works.

1. Not optimizing Flash at all or not creating a Flash site in the first place
2. Creating a parallel version in HTML/CSS that looks less “flashy”
3. Undergoing the more complex measures to optimize an all Flash site
4. Combining Flash and HTML elements where both fit in best

The fourth is the best one from the start, can not be applied in every case though. #1 is not really an option, it means rather abandoning the Flash project and creating another one. I want to concentrate on #3 as there are still some cases where Flash rocks, even when the site is done completely in Adobe Flash.

Whether it’s a photographers site made in Flash, a movie site or a car site, you can still do some search engine optimization for it. Flash SEO is seldom undertaken but there are nonetheless tried out methods of doing it. I collected here 5 tutorials that explain search engine optimization for Flash with expertise:

1. A modern approach to Flash SEO by deconcept
2. Google, Flash and SEO by Internet Marketing Analysts, LLC
3. Making Flash websites search engine friendly by Roy Tanck
4. How to SEO Flash by Jonathan Hochman
5. How do Flash Sites Rank Well? by Aaron Wall

If you do not want to read those first I give you following simple 3 step advice for doing SEO with Flash sites:

1. Embed your Flash in PHP and create a distinct URL for every crucial keyframe of the movie, in short: mimic a page
2. Use XML for all your contents and output it once in your Flash movie and once in a HTML version
3. Create a non-Flash menu or sitemap where you link all/important keyframe-URLs

Remember that if you or the client can afford Flash he also can afford SEO. Moreover he has less hassle with different browser and platform incompatibilities so he can spend the money for SEO.

Of course, all websites fluctuate up and down. However, well optimized sites will spend more time on the upper end of the rankings than poorly optimized or spammy sites which may see high rankings but which will lose those rankings over time.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

• Keyword Selection
• Content
• Site Structure
• Optimization
• Internal Linking
• Human Testing
• Submissions
• Link Building
• Monitoring
• The Extras

Step One – Keyword Selection

Arguably, keyword selection is the single most important stage in the entire optimization process. If you do not choose the correct keyword phrases you will not maximize your ROI on this campaign. I mention ROI and use it as a reminder that keyword selection is not necessarily about looking for the most searched phrases. A profitable optimization is one which produces the greatest return on investment for the time and money that are available to put towards it.

Bigger Is Not Always Better
If you are a web designer in Seattle who has just started your own business, you could make “web design” the targeted keyword phrase for your site as it certainly has the highest number of searches with 707,962 in September 2004 according to the “Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool”. If you have thousands of dollars and many months to dedicated just to attaining those rankings it could be done. However, would that be the best use of your time? Alternatively you could target “seattle web site design” with 5,070 searches in September. A Google link check shows the number of links for the top three competitors for the Seattle search had 132, 21, and 47 respectively whereas for “web design” the top three had 18,700, 5,420, and 1,310 incoming links each.

With a good site you would get more work than you could handle with 5,070 searches on Overture alone if you were ranking well on the major search engines. This would clearly provide the highest return on investment for the small business owner who most certainly does not have the time and money available to target “web design” and who wouldn’t have the manpower to take advantage of the rankings even if they were attained.

This is an extreme example, but it clearly illustrates that sometimes the phrase with the highest number of searches is not necessarily the best target for your business.

Phrases That Sell
Another consideration you will want to make when choosing your keyword phrases is whether or not they are “buy phrases“. Phrases with a high number of searches that are not “buy phrases” will tend to bring a lot of traffic, however the conversion ratio will be far lower. Should you choose to target “buy phrases” you may not get the same number of visitors but your ratio of visitors to sales will be much higher.

In this example, let’s assume you are the marketing director for a well-known accounting company. There will be many choices you can make for your targeted keyword phrase. The top searched phrases in September 2004 that were accounting-related are:

• “accounting” with 156,095 searches
• “accounting software” with 54,621 searches
• “accounting job” with 32,015 searches
• “accounting services” with 19,260 searches
• “accounting firm” with 13,089 searches

Many might go with their gut instinct and attempt to target “accounting”. The problem with this phrase (other than the competition for it) is that the people doing that search are not necessarily even looking for an accounting firm. They may be accounting students, small business owners not interested in hiring an accountant but just looking for tax information, etc. “Accounting software” and “accounting job” are irrelevant, which leaves us with “accounting services” and “accounting firm” as the two main options.

From this point an evaluation of competition should be performed and the pros and cons of making each the primary target should be weighed based on the amount of work it will take to attain the phrase vs. how many searches there are for that phrase.

Often promotions that target multiple “buy phrases” will end up far more successful that those targeting phrases based solely on the number of searches due to the increased conversions and generally decreased competition.

Tools To Use
Armed now with knowledge on how to recognize and choose between different phrases there remains only one question, how do you know which phrases are even searched? Fortunately there are a couple great resources out there to help you find out how many searches are performed for specific phrases. They are:

The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
A decent tool for researching keyword phrases. It indicates which phrases had the highest numbers of searches on Overture during the previous month. The biggest weakness it has, as far as applying it to the natural search engines, is that Overture counts singular and plural as the same and also corrects misspelling so the totals are all lumped together in this tool whereas on the natural engines they are considered differently.

This is part one of ten in this search engine positioning series. In part one we will outline how to choose the keyword phrases most likely to produce a high ROI for your search engine positioning efforts. Over this ten part series we will go through ten essential elements and steps to optimizing a site. Some steps take a few hours, some may take months depending on the competition, but in the end and, if done correctly, you will have a well optimized site that will place well and hold it’s positioning.

Of course, all websites fluctuate up and down. However, well optimized sites will spend more time on the upper end of the rankings than poorly optimized or spammy sites which may see high rankings but which will lose those rankings over time.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

• Keyword Selection
• Content
• Site Structure
• Optimization
• Internal Linking
• Human Testing
• Submissions
• Link Building
• Monitoring
• The Extras

Step One – Keyword Selection

Arguably, keyword selection is the single most important stage in the entire optimization process. If you do not choose the correct keyword phrases you will not maximize your ROI on this campaign. I mention ROI and use it as a reminder that keyword selection is not necessarily about looking for the most searched phrases. A profitable optimization is one which produces the greatest return on investment for the time and money that are available to put towards it.

Bigger Is Not Always Better
If you are a web designer in Seattle who has just started your own business, you could make “web design” the targeted keyword phrase for your site as it certainly has the highest number of searches with 707,962 in September 2004 according to the “Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool”. If you have thousands of dollars and many months to dedicated just to attaining those rankings it could be done. However, would that be the best use of your time? Alternatively you could target “seattle web site design” with 5,070 searches in September. A Google link check shows the number of links for the top three competitors for the Seattle search had 132, 21, and 47 respectively whereas for “web design” the top three had 18,700, 5,420, and 1,310 incoming links each.

With a good site you would get more work than you could handle with 5,070 searches on Overture alone if you were ranking well on the major search engines. This would clearly provide the highest return on investment for the small business owner who most certainly does not have the time and money available to target “web design” and who wouldn’t have the manpower to take advantage of the rankings even if they were attained.

This is an extreme example, but it clearly illustrates that sometimes the phrase with the highest number of searches is not necessarily the best target for your business.

Phrases That Sell
Another consideration you will want to make when choosing your keyword phrases is whether or not they are “buy phrases“. Phrases with a high number of searches that are not “buy phrases” will tend to bring a lot of traffic, however the conversion ratio will be far lower. Should you choose to target “buy phrases” you may not get the same number of visitors but your ratio of visitors to sales will be much higher.

In this example, let’s assume you are the marketing director for a well-known accounting company. There will be many choices you can make for your targeted keyword phrase. The top searched phrases in September 2004 that were accounting-related are:

• “accounting” with 156,095 searches
• “accounting software” with 54,621 searches
• “accounting job” with 32,015 searches
• “accounting services” with 19,260 searches
• “accounting firm” with 13,089 searches

Many might go with their gut instinct and attempt to target “accounting”. The problem with this phrase (other than the competition for it) is that the people doing that search are not necessarily even looking for an accounting firm. They may be accounting students, small business owners not interested in hiring an accountant but just looking for tax information, etc. “Accounting software” and “accounting job” are irrelevant, which leaves us with “accounting services” and “accounting firm” as the two main options.

From this point an evaluation of competition should be performed and the pros and cons of making each the primary target should be weighed based on the amount of work it will take to attain the phrase vs. how many searches there are for that phrase.

Often promotions that target multiple “buy phrases” will end up far more successful that those targeting phrases based solely on the number of searches due to the increased conversions and generally decreased competition.

Tools To Use
Armed now with knowledge on how to recognize and choose between different phrases there remains only one question, how do you know which phrases are even searched? Fortunately there are a couple great resources out there to help you find out how many searches are performed for specific phrases. They are:

The Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool
A decent tool for researching keyword phrases. It indicates which phrases had the highest numbers of searches on Overture during the previous month. The biggest weakness it has, as far as applying it to the natural search engines, is that Overture counts singular and plural as the same and also corrects misspelling so the totals are all lumped together in this tool whereas on the natural engines they are considered differently.

WordTracker
WordTracker is very similar to Overture’s Search Term Suggestion Tool except that this tool differentiates between plural and singular searches, does not correct spelling (i.e. it gives the number of searches for misspellings rather than correcting them and giving a total for correct and misspelled words) and gives the results in predicted numbers of searches over all the engines per day rather than just one engine over a month.

They have a great free trial that doesn’t give you as many results but which can be very useful.

When using these tools I recommend beginning with the Overture Search term Suggestion Tool and once you’ve narrowed down your choices, switch to WordTracker to insure that you’re getting the right information in regards to tense (singular vs. plural) and also that the numbers match. Sometimes you will find that the numbers are completely different from each tool. In this event you will have to use your best judgment.

Don’t forget to check misspellings when using WordTracker!

Tips & Tricks
There are no real “tricks” to uncovering the keywords you should target however there are a few tips. A few pointers that will help you maximize your keyword selection:

Think like a layman. Just because you know your industry terms doesn’t mean that everyone does. Don’t just think of the words you use to describe your products/services, think of the words you would use if you knew nothing about it other than the fact that you needed it. You may want to recruit a friend and have them run some searches for you.

Think like an expert. On the other side of the coin, there may be phrases used specifically in your industry that people “in the know” would use to search for your products and/or services. Be sure to look into these phrases. You just may find some hidden gems that no one else has thought to target.

Don’t target too many phrases. Some SEOs and webmasters target dozens and sometimes even hundreds of phrases. The end result, they often miss the ones they most wanted to attain. Keeping yourself and your keyword list focused will keep your site focused. If your site is focused, you’ll rank higher for the phrases that will produce the highest return on investment.

Testing
Test your phrases. If there is any debate about whether a search phrase is worth targeting, it’s often a good idea to test the conversions through pay-per-click engines. Set up an account with a PPC engine and bid on the phrases that you would like to target.

You have to remember that the PPC engines do not provide for the same amount of traffic as the natural engines. Test the initial phrases, test alternative phrases, and see which produce the best results. Something else to keep in mind is that PPC are not natural engines. If your ROI is not as high on more costly phrases, that doesn’t mean they won’t produce the higher return on the natural engines where a top ranking does not cost money-per-click.

In the end you will have confirmed a solid list of keyword phrases and, if the PPC campaign is providing a good return on investment, you might as well keep it running and enjoy the “bonus” traffic that it provides.

In part two of our “Ten Steps To an Optimized Website” series we will be covering content. This will cover everything from the optimization of existing content to the creation of new content for your website.

About The Author
Dave Davies is the owner of Beanstalk Search Engine Positioning. He has been optimizing and ranking websites for over three years and has a solid history of success. Dave is available to answer any questions that you may have about your website and how to get it into the top positions on the major search engines.