Supplemental results .. why won't Google drop the pages

[sandor]

A particular site of mine ... if you search for it by url, google displays the active pages as well as all sorts of supplemental results with links to pages that no longer exist. How do I get Google to drop these pages .. it's been spidering the site regularly and several pages are fresh-tagged but it refuses to drop those supplemental result pages even though they return 404 errors when you click through.

[renee]

so google can claim they have a quadrillion pages in their index. what a cheat, eh? do no evil?

[nickied]

A particular site of mine ... if you search for it by url, google displays the active pages as well as all sorts of supplemental results with links to pages that no longer exist. How do I get Google to drop these pages .. it's been spidering the site regularly and several pages are fresh-tagged but it refuses to drop those supplemental result pages even though they return 404 errors when you click through.

If they are indeed 404 you can try the google console remove tool: [google.com...]

[g1smd]

Those supplemental results will never have their title and description updated. You can completely change the content on the page, the page will be cached and even appear in search results for the new terms, but it will continue for ever more to appear as a supplemental result for old search terms. This can continue even several years after all of the words you searched for were removed from the page. Google hangs on to that page and continues to serve it and its ancient title and description even though it no longer represents whatever is really on the page now.

The only way out is to use the URL console to delist it. It will be gone in just a few days. However this also delists it in results where it might be a useful match for current content.

If the page is already 404 then use the URL contoller to delist it without worry.

[frances]

But what about the warning: "Please keep in mind that submitting via the automatic URL removal system will cause a temporary, six months, removal of your site from the Google index."

I have some pages that return 404 header but the old cached version lingers in the supplemental index. I'ld love to get rid of then but I have been frightened off by the warning above.

Is it nothing to worry about?

[g1smd]

If Google is listing a URL that does not actually return a valid page on your site then there is no issue with removing that listing from Google's index as far as I can see.

The URL console has options to remove single pages, whole folders, or every page of a site. Choose which one you use, carefully.