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vikramrajbhat

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Google shows old document which has been deleted from website

Hi All,

When I search with keyword "BETEC 140", google is showing an old document for which the link has been deleted (however still the old doc present in the physical directory of the my web server as a back up) from the website www.de.graceconstruction.com.

Could you please help why the link is still coming up? I want that to be removed from the google search.
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it_saige
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Since the old doc is still present, spiders keep indedxing it.

You might think that using webmasters tools from oogle would remove the page... but if the old page is stil there it will not be removed. You might consider renaming the file, say .htmlold isntesad of .htm so that you still keep the archive while keeping the page away from spiders.
Since you still have the document on your webserver, the document can still be indexed by Google.  To completely remove the document the easiest way is to remove the document from your webserver.  This will render the document URL with a 404 error, which will be removed from Google indexing after your site is crawled again (or you can submit a request for URL removal: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals, you will need to be logged into your Webmaster Tools account).

If you want to keep the document on your webserver, you will need to restrict the document URL from Google which can be done through your robots.txt file.  Once you restrict the document URL, you should submit a request for removal through the URL noted above.  Please note that the document URL will have to be either blocked by your robots.txt file or render a 404 error in order to be removed, if you submit the request without doing either of the two, Google will continue to index that document.

The 3rd option, if you have an updated version of the document, is to do a 301 redirect of the document URL.  I recommend this solution because if people are linking to your old documentation, they will automatically get redirected to the new documentation, instead of being served an error page if the document is completely removed.
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