help me erase my trail

January 29, 2010 5:32 AM

How do I erase my google trail? When I search my name on google, all kinds of old stuff appears, much of which I have already deleted. Is there some way to remove this stuff permanently and totally, so it doesn't appear when my name is googled?
posted by crazylegs to computers & internet (11 answers total)

Google has an info and contact form for just this sort of quandary.
posted by emilyd22222 at 5:37 AM on January 29, 2010

In a word, no.
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:41 AM on January 29, 2010

(If you delete the original content, it will eventually disappear from Google search, but that doesn't mean it can't be found through wayback machine, etc.)
posted by fourcheesemac at 5:45 AM on January 29, 2010

If you own a domain, you can request that it doesn't show up on the wayback machine as well.
posted by HuronBob at 6:31 AM on January 29, 2010

You can try. But not really.

Your best bet is to add so much more, new, and current info that the things you don't like are pushed, way, way down.
posted by rokusan at 6:48 AM on January 29, 2010

This has been asked before.
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:24 AM on January 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

You need to generate new content.

The new content needs to have greater Google rank and weight than the old content. Drive the old content off the radar.
posted by JFitzpatrick at 7:56 AM on January 29, 2010 [1 favorite]

If the search results return pages that no longer exist then you can speed up the time it takes to get removed from Google's database by resubmitting them for indexing.

It sounds funny but the bot will crawl the page, find it doesn't exist and remove the entry from their database.

The other alternative would be to just wait until the bot comes back to your page but, depending on how popular it is, that could be weeks or months.
posted by mr_silver at 9:55 AM on January 29, 2010

mr_silver: If the search results return pages that no longer exist then you can speed up the time it takes to get removed from Google's database by resubmitting them for indexing. It sounds funny but the bot will crawl the page, find it doesn't exist and remove the entry from their database.

That's exactly how I got most of my personal domain removed from Google's index after I took the site down.
posted by MikeHarris at 11:31 AM on January 29, 2010

But.....how do you resubmit something for indexing?
posted by Juicy Avenger at 12:25 PM on January 29, 2010

Someone who commented on my blog using her real name recently contacted me, asking me to change it to a pseudonym. I had no problem doing so.
posted by etoile at 6:32 PM on January 29, 2010