Many new bloggers plunge into the blogosphere little realizing the dangers of revealing private information in cyberspace. Then when warned by opposite parties they hastily delete their blog and think that they are safe. Far from it.
Once your blog has been in existence for some time and you have made it a public blog Google indexes it and caches pages on it's own servers so that they are immediately served on their results pages (SERPs) when Internet surfers search for something. You can see the cached pages of your blog by typing the following in any Google search box :
cache:BLOG_URL
and hit Enter key on keyboard. Notice there is no space between 'cache' and 'BLOG_URL' which, of course, you must replace by actual link of the site whose cache you wish to see.
PREVENT INDEXING
One method to prevent Google from indexing your site is to make the blog PRIVATE at the onset. Making it private after it has been public for some time will not undo the indexing which takes place in the public phase. To make a blog private go to Settings------>Permissions------>Blog Readers and choose Only those I Invite.
A Private blog in Blogger does not send out feeds. Feeds are one of the main methods by which Google indexes your blog. So stopping feeds will delay indexing of a PUBLIC blog. If you want fast indexing of your blog go to Settings----->Site Feed and set them to Short or Full and submit Feed URLs to Feed aggregator sites.
Using a META NOINDEX tag to prevent your whole blog from being indexed. This tag will look like this :
<META CONTENT='FOLLOW,NOINDEX' NAME='robots'/>
The FOLLOW directive instructs the robot spiders to follow the links in the blog to their destination.
Using a Robots.txt file. At present this file resides in the root of your blog and is non-editable. Hence this cannot be used for this purpose.
REMOVING POST FROM GOOGLE
To remove content from Google first delete the content. DO NOT DELETE THE BLOG. Login to Blogger.com and click on Posts link on Dashboard. The list of Posts will open. Click Delete link next to post you wish to delete. THIS DOES NOT DELETE THE CACHED POST. The cached copy will take some time to disappear from Google.
REQUEST REMOVAL
After creating blog you have to add it to Google Webmasters site to check how Google spiders are crawling the blog and indexing it. You can request removal of any content using Google Webmasters Tools : Removal. Click the Removal link in sidebar and then click the button : +New Removal Request and you will get options to delete :
1. Individual URLs: web pages, images, or other files.
2. A directory and all subdirectories on your site.
3. Your entire site.
4. Cached copy of a Google search result.
This removal may take some time so be patient. Removals are effective for 6 months. You can revoke a removal at any time. If, after the 6 months, the page is blocked or doesn't exist, the page will not be displayed in Google search results.
IMPORTANT WARNING : IF YOU DELETE BLOG WITHOUT DELETING POSTS WITHIN IT YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO DELETE POSTS LATER.
IF YOU CHANGE ADDRESS/URL OF BLOG THE OLD ADDRESS MAY STILL CARRY YOUR CONTENT AND WILL BE TAKEN OVER BY SPAMMERS.
Do not change url of an old blog. You will lose your search engine standings and will be forced to start from the bottom of 8 million plus blogs (at present and counting).
14 comments:
your information is always so useful for new bloggers like me.
Can you please tell me how I can delete a post that I made to another individuals blog? I cannot figure it out. Does she have to delete it???
Can I delete a posting I made to another person's blog site?
2456,
Is it a post or a comment on a post?
how long does a cache removal request take. I need to delete any trace of some volatile information I put on a post. In future it would have been best to just rewrite the post, but alas it has stayed in space. I try to write to the non-human google and blogger men but none seem to help. How do you quicken the process when the information is indeed life threatening????
Lali Cienfuegos,
There are millions of blogs and hence no way to quicken the process. You just have to be patient and persistent.
I deleted my blog about a month ago, unfortunately, because it contained full names (which I accidentally forgot to put as "--------," instead); it was for a draft. Should I re-activate this blog (meaning, by using the same username) and post something just innocent (like a link to nytimes.com, but to no particular article), so the new version can replace the old one? Sorry if this sounds odd. . .
Joyce,
The content is now in Google cache and it will take time to disappear.
You can request removal at Google webmaster tools. New content/version does not replace old content.
How long does it take for the content to disappear entirely?
Joyce,
I don't think anyone knows for sure!
please help me!!!
when i type http://www.(MyBlogName).blogspot.com, it says that it has been deleted. when i type http://(MyBlogName).blogspot.com, it still appears there!! also, i would like to add on that i deleted my gmail, blogger and talk(i think) service through gmail.
please help me!! i am very scared. i dont want my unwanted blog on the internet for centuries and centuries. please help me..
Anonymous,
You will have to wait till it disappears from Google Cache. This is why you should not delete the account until you are sure your blog has been completely deleted.
By deleting the account you have thrown away the key of the house from which you want to recover something!
Hi, how do I delete my name from a deleted post? I posted a comment on someone's blog but my full name (which is very unusual) came up as the user name. So I deleted the post but it still has my name showing, even though it says the author deleted the post. I really want to get rid of it because my name is so unusual so people will know it's me. Please help! Thanks
Honey,
Ask the blog owner to delete it.
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