Question about removing a URL from Google

Just url's with the www

[carjocky]

I need to know if I use googles url removel tool only want to remove just the pages that have the WWW in the url from google how do I go about this. I am concerend that it will remove the entire site including the [site.com...] when only I want it to remove [site.com....] I have read and scoured the forums and cannot seem to find the answer to how to only remove the URL's associated with the WWW. Your help would be much appreceated.

Thanks

[Tsuren]

Technically http://www.example.com and http://example.com are different sites. http://dvsdfvsdfvsdfvgsdfbsdf.example.com is actually the same.
Traditionally people tune servers that www.example.com and example.com are pointing on the same place. But it's just a tradition.
So be sure that you separated www.example.com and example.com then return 404 on requests of www.something. If you are in rush you can use Google's automatic URL removal system. Actually 404 is not the only way. I just like it. Please look at [google.com...] for others details.

BUT! There is a small "but" always :) I guess you are making too harsh decision. Surfers like WWW. Tomorrow someone will post an advice somewhere.. he is a loyal customer of you... he remembers you URL... but he knows that site's name always goes with www. You lost those natural links. Look at the boss. E.g. [google.com...] . Why do you not follow that way?

[edited by: tedster at 3:45 pm (utc) on Jan. 21, 2006]
[edit reason] use example.com [/edit]

[graeme_p]

A 301 redirect from www.example.com to example.com

It worked for me. It solves the problem of people typing in the www and preserves page rank flow form incoming links that point to www.

If you are using Apache it needs one line in the .htaccess file.

[texasville]

I believe that it says in the url removal console that it is not for solving www vs. non www problems and that use of the tool for this purpose will remove the site completely from google's index.

[Wizard]

Do you newbie people forget about reading back old posts?! I did this mistake over a year ago, then many other people did it too, and we discussed the matter here a few months ago!

URL Console has unexpected behaviour: IF YOU REMOVE ONLY NON-WWW URL OR ONLY WWW URL IT REMOVES BOTH! So trying to solve www/non-www duplicate problem with URL Console leads directly to six months of your site out of the index!

[edited by: tedster at 4:28 am (utc) on Jan. 21, 2006]
[edit reason] change formatting [/edit]

[g1smd]

You cannot remove www OR non-www. It will remove BOTH.

You cannot REMOVE a URL - it merely HIDES it for 90 days.

[Tsuren]

Wizard, keep your horses. You return 404 on www requests and 200 on no-www requests - it works. If you are in rush, e.g. some sencitive information got in SERPs by mistake, you need to use console. By the way, there is nothing about temporary removing if you use 404. Please, compare two quotes:

1. Note: If you believe your request is urgent and cannot wait until the next time Google crawls your site, use our automatic URL removal system. We'll accept your removal request only if the page returns a true 404 error via the http headers. Please ensure that you return a true 404 error even if you choose to display a more user-friendly body of the HTML page for your visitors. It won't help to return a page that says "File Not Found" if the http headers still return a status code of 200, or normal.

AND

2. Note: If you believe your request is urgent and cannot wait until the next time Google crawls your site, use our automatic URL removal system. In order for this automated process to work, the webmaster must first insert the appropriate meta tags into the page's HTML code. Doing this and submitting via the automatic URL removal system will cause a temporary, 180-day removal of these pages from the Google index, regardless of whether you remove the robots.txt file or meta tags after processing your request.

As you can see there is a difference betweeen 404 and robots restrictions.

[Wizard]

Wizard, keep your horses. You return 404 on www requests and 200 on no-www requests - it works. If you are in rush, e.g. some sencitive information got in SERPs by mistake, you need to use console. By the way, there is nothing about temporary removing if you use 404.

In the past, I used meta robots 'noindex' for one URL version while 'index' in another, and it removed both. I also removed an outdated domain with robots.txt and so I know it also removes both. I didn't check what if one version returns 404 and another 200 - if this works as expected, would be ok.

Tedster, sorry for the formatting, I shouldn't have bolded all my post, you're right :) I reacted too emotionally seeing that someone is likely to unintentionally harm their site ranking just because of this know URL Console issue.

[g1smd]

If the result is a supplemental result, and even if the URL returns a "404", Google will still add it back into the results after 90 or 180 days. For supplemental results there is no reality check as to whether the URL should be just dumped at the end of the time; it is always re-added.

[tedster]

seeing that someone is likely to unintentionally harm their site ranking

Understood. And I agree with the urgency.

Most definitely, do NOT try to fix canonical issues by using the URL Console to remove just one version (whether with or without the 'www'). Matt Cutts also mentioned this quite strongly. The console will just zap everything for you.

[carjocky]

Got the redirect 301 redirect up and running. Thanks for the help. Hopefully it will help in the serps with not having the double site penalty. I doubt it will help with a bunch of supplimental results at this point but one can only hope.

[Tsuren]

Wizard, tedster, I understand your concern about the console but sometimes you just have no choice. People do unbelievable mistakes. I’m sending you sticky mails. Please have a look. That’s a sample of “your request is urgent and cannot wait”