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We are taking a quick time-out on our series on large site optimization to provide feedback on a question we are getting asked frequently in the Webmaster Center forum.
Site owners want to control which content gets indexed. We have worked hard to ensure that we follow and respect the Robots Exclusion Protocol as directed in your robots.txt file. But occasionally there are pages that get indexed because they were not blocked or for some other technical reason and you want to have the URLs or site removed from the Live Search index.
If there is content that you want removed, the best thing to do is to specify this exclusion in either your robots.txt file, your HTTP header, or add a meta tag exclusion within the <head> tag at the top of your HTML page for example:
<meta name="robots" content="noindex"/>
Once the page is recrawled, the page will no longer be linked to in the SERP. However, if time is an issue or the page is still alive in the cache, we have a process that you can use to have URLs removed more quickly.
If you need URLs removed from our index, please take the following steps:
1. Ensure the pages that need to be removed are unavailable to the crawler. To remove a URL at the next crawl ensure that the page displays a 404 file not found error.
2. Launch the Live Search Support form. Go to the form and begin filling it out.
3. Identify from where in Live Search you want the URL removed. To quickly remove a URL, select Content Removal Request from the form’s drop-down list. Select one of these resulting options for removal:
4. Complete the rest of the form. Submit the URL or URLs to be removed, the query used to find the URL, complete the rest of the form, and then click Submit.
Once we have received your request, we will process the request to remove the URL within 48 hours of the request being accepted. In the future, we may provide an automated tool for these requests, but for now, this is the most effective way to quickly remove a URL from the Live Search index. If you have additional questions on controlling the content that we index, feel free to ask in our forums.
Jeremiah Andrick – Program Manager Live Search Webmaster Center
hi
iwant remove any url of my site from live search index.
and i add in index for a few days last time
fro change of my site.
please help me.
Why haven't you addressed the issue with live.com cashback being broken for paypal transfers? Why is microsoft failing to communicate with its customers about this and leaving us in the dark? We're worried about being scammed.
I haven't even gotten a reply to my support ticket for over 72 hours. This is awful. I will NEVER use live.com again.
Stephen,
Sorry to hear there are issues. I would love to see you get help. I will see if I can track down your support ticket and get the issue closed.
Thanks
Jeremiah Andrick
Didn't mean to spam the blog Jeremiah, but I was really getting nowhere with anyone in support. I received t1 of the outstanding payments today...hopefully this is a sign this is getting fixed. But looking at FatWallet.com, this issue has been going on for weeks.
i had a hard time working out why my site wasnt listed but it turns out you take your information from the open source directory unless you have a little meta tag stopping it now i have added the meta tag my site is now appearing
Hello!
Is it also possible to remove all URLs on my domain from the index with that form you linked? If so, I'm not really sure about what to type in at "Search query/Keyword", because MSN shouldn't really find anything using any keyword.
My English is not so good, I hope you can understand what I'm trying to say.
Thanks a lot,
Eric.
the critera is hard to followgetting listed is nearly immpossable
I've been trying to use the form mentioned here, but it is broken. Every time I submit a request, it says the page is unavailable and I lose everything I've typed.
Also, we were able to submit a request for cache removal at the end of February and were assured that it would be taken care on in 2 business days. It hasn't been. Is there a direct contact that we can e-mail? This is unacceptable.
Ah, the form only works when submitting from IE. That figures.
If my site have several pages that is not indexed, will that affect my site ranking overall?
Thanks a lot to gave us such valuable information.
Is there any way to delete a directory of URLs from indexed pages?
I want more of my pages to be indexed by Live Search. Presently only 367 pages are on Live Search index, while Google has 4,180 pages indexed. Is there anything I can do on my part to get more of my pages indexed?
I use robots.txt and add a meta tag to exclude the pages I don't want search engines to index. And major search engines respect my rule.
However, Google index for my directory is 2,080 while MSN index is only 507. This is a big margin that Bing needs to work on to improve.
Using same form link inclusion request can be made.
Please can you amend this post to clarify what pages will be removed - I tried to get some URLs removed (after validating ownership of the site in Webmaster Center... ) and was told:
"Bing.com does not remove sites or pages from the index unless they contain illegal content, as we do not have the means to readily verify the validity and authority of such requests. The search index is built based on billions of documents from millions of Web sites, and we cannot depend on manual operations to maintain the index."