Google search information refreshing/updating after a change

June 4, 2017 9:12 AM

Hi all, unfortunately I just discovered that by accident my home-address was put online by an organization I am tied to. I've got them to remove it, but when I search my name it still comes up in google in the first lines under the hit/result. Is there anything else I can do? When will Google have the search result updated with the new information (that is, with the removed information on my address) ?
posted by Dutchmeisje to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

Best answer: If they've removed it you can request google to remove the dead link. instructions here
posted by Nimmie Amee at 9:23 AM on June 4, 2017 [2 favorites]

Best answer: And if they have merely edited a page, they can request Google re-crawl their site using the Search Console.
posted by kindall at 9:36 AM on June 4, 2017 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you Nimmie Ammee, I just filed the request. Would you have any idea how much time it takes for them to process it?
posted by Dutchmeisje at 9:44 AM on June 4, 2017

Response by poster: kindall, it's not my website and it's a holiday here today and tomorrow so I'll have to wait to ask them that Tuesday morning.
posted by Dutchmeisje at 9:48 AM on June 4, 2017

You just have to wait till google recrawls the web page in question. There's really no way to tell when that might happen.
posted by ZypDon54 at 1:42 PM on June 4, 2017

I had to deal with this exact problem last month on behalf of a family member, who'd bought something online from a company that subsequently put its entire customer database on the Web by mistake (My guess is through mucking up their Apache configuration, but the company won't reply to emails asking WTF just happened).

The company removed the data quite quickly, but not before Google had crawled it. I found the selfsame link mentioned above and got my family member to submit the request - it took between 36 and 48 hours for the search result to disappear. The company said it had contacted Google, but didn't say when.

Alarmingly, the search result reappeared a few days later, without (as far as I know) the company republishing the errant data. My family member resubmitted the take-down request and it went away within 12-24 hours, and AFAIK it hasn't popped up since. So check back for a while; I don't think Google's cleansing process works very well.

(It was a very bad thing for their personal details to appear on Google, something they've been meticulous about not letting happen. I had to field some highly anxious phone calls: I am not impressed.)
posted by Devonian at 4:37 PM on June 4, 2017

Response by poster: Update: Google just denied my request for removal of the outdated information in the hit/cache because I requested the page URL instead of the URL for the hit (or something). But it took them 8 days to get to handling/denied status! That is much longer than any indication I could find in a quick search last week (where it said it would take 1 or 2 days).
The organization that owns the website didn't get back to me on the re-crawling, they had to check with their web-provider. I'll try them again tomorrow.
posted by Dutchmeisje at 8:21 AM on June 12, 2017