How do I remove an old URL from Google?

Cleaning up your website is important, but simply deleting a page can be harmful to your SEO (search engine optimization). If you take a page offline without taking the right steps, you lose accumulated value and visitors may end up on 'dead links'.

In this article, we explain how to correctly remove an old URL from Google without harming your rankings.

Step 1: Determine the strategy (Redirect or Delete?)

Before taking action, you must determine the goal of the removal:

• Is there a replacement page? Then use a 301 redirect. This automatically sends visitors and Google to the new URL while preserving the SEO value.

• Is the page truly redundant? Then ensure the server issues a 410 status code ("Gone"). This is a clearer signal to Google than a standard 404 error message indicating that the page has been intentionally and permanently deleted.

Step 2: Clean up sitemap and internal links

Prevent Google from continuing to find the old URL via your own website:

Sitemap: Remove the URL from your sitemap.xml.

Internal links: Check your website for links pointing to the old page and adjust or remove them. This prevents frustration for visitors and error messages in Google Search Console.

Step 3: Temporarily hide the URL via Google Search Console

Do you want the page to disappear from search results immediately? Then use Google's removal tool. Please note: this is a temporary solution (approx. 6 months) while Google re-crawls your site and processes the changes.

1. Log in to Google Search Console.

2. Select the correct website.

3. In the menu, go to Indexing > Removals.

4. Click the New Request button.

5. Select the Temporarily remove URL tab.

6. Enter the exact URL and confirm the request.

Step 4: Monitoring and follow-up

After submitting the request, it is important to continue monitoring the status:

• Check in Google Search Console to ensure no new crawl errors occur.

• Use tools such as Screaming Frog to verify that the old URL is no longer linked anywhere.

• Search Google for site:yourdomain.nl/old-url to see if the page has actually disappeared from the index.