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Topic: Google search and outdated websites
| Author | Message |
| nellie bly | Posted – 11/29/2007 3:51:04 PM | show profile if a webpage turns up in a google search is it necessarily an active web page or can it also be a cached page (one that has been taken down)? In the course of doing some pr work for a new client which belongs to a small trade association, I googled the name of the assoc. to find out about them in advance of my first meeting with them. Except for the first result, which is the association's current very bare bones website, the other top results were very outdated. One was a previous used site with many former members. It seems to me the site wouldnt show up in a google search if they had taken it down. why would they leave it up if it had been replaced with a new site? |
| nellie bly | Posted – 11/29/2007 3:54:18 PM | show profile just want to clarify, I want to ask the association to take down the outdated sites, since the google search results create a confusing and unfavorable picture of the group. I assume if they take down the old site/page, it will eventually disappear from google search? |
| writesonwater | Posted – 11/29/2007 4:46:23 PM | show profile I completely agree, Nel. My sister's business, 10 years in, is a gorgeous retail feast for the eyes. A crappy first run website that's old, old, old and doesn't reflect her store is her only web presence. She has assumed since she's no longer paying for it, it's gone -- and that people won't look her up and see THAT. What's worse is I've told her about it and it doesn't register. (She's not much of a net person, but vaguely aware she needs to get involved in web commerce.) Old web stuff is harmful with the googling everyone can do these days. Make them take it down! Maybe if you print out pages with it and show it to them as if it was current advertising, they'll get it. As to HOW to get it off the net, I'll leave that to a techie to address. |
| Yam | Posted – 11/29/2007 5:22:40 PM | show profile It's my understanding that you have to ask Google and whatever other search engines have cached versions of the site to remove that info from their archives. The association may well have taken the site down (or may not--you should definitely ask), but in oversimplified terms Google and the other search engines basically take a picture of every web page and archive those images. So, when you find a cached website in Google the site may have been taken down but you're looking at Google's archive. Does that make sense? |
| nellie bly | Posted – 11/29/2007 8:31:36 PM | show profile I emailed a couple of people in the group about the outdated sites and they seem embarrassed. it's pretty clear they never googled themselves. (jeez, I google myself frequently to see if anyone misappropriated any of my articles or whatever. ) now to see what they can do about the problem. |
| nellie bly | Posted – 11/29/2007 8:36:11 PM | show profile thanks for the clarification, Yam. I remember hearing something like that before. I guess I thought one had to go to a special Google search page for cached sites. My only experiince with cached sites is when a website IS taken down by google, lets say because it is connected with a crime and was in the news. Then you'll see cached versions of the sites on blogs. Obviously they saved it before the site as taken down? |
| questoo1 | Posted – 11/29/2007 8:40:44 PM | show profile http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/topic.py?topic=8459 Seems like a pretty simple task to remove/update indexes. |
| nellie bly | Posted – 11/29/2007 11:03:18 PM | show profile thanks, questoo! very interesting. I will copy the page, as well as the outdated pages as suggested by "writes on water" and bring to the meeting. |
| InsomniacNOT | Posted – 11/30/2007 1:33:21 PM | show profile Questoo is right. If it's your page you can get it out of the Google cache very easily simply by adding the required HTML code. You only have to request Google to take it out if it's someone else's page saying -- for example -- libelous stuff about you. |
| writesonwater | Posted – 11/30/2007 4:48:47 PM | show profile And of course you know the first rule -- if possible, when you bring a problem to the table, have a solution or two in your pocket ... |
