Deleted media file appearing in Google Search, still appearing for visitors
-
My company’s received a request to remove a hosted PDF file on blog.thetrustedinsight.com. We deleted the file in the media library, but it is still appearing on the site. The company’s whose information we posted is getting upset. How can we ensure this file is GONE?
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
-
-
How soon will that be? They’re very upset that this PDF is still showing up. It’s a liability for both of us.
-
I’ll tag this thread for Staff assistance. Please subscribe to the thread so you are notified when they respond and please be patient while waiting.
-
I think waiting 17 hours for a file I deleted to disappear from a cache is being more than patient.
-
Here is a link to the support documents: http://en.support.wordpress.com/media/deleting-files/
Remember that search engines might have a cached copy of the file also
-
I’m a Volunteer and I cannot expedite this. There are 38 million of us. I’m aware that there are pages several of threads that have been tagged for Staff attention and that’s not including support tickets. Staff work their way through support tickets and forum threads tagged for their attention by dealing with those that have the earliest date and timestamps first, then moving forward to deal with those that have the most recent date and time stamps. Please be patient while waiting for Staff to assist the bloggers who posted before you did.
-
@TT
I saw that – the link I left references the WordPress.COM cache system. The other possibility is that the OP and the organization is seeing a cached copy of the file that is on their PC and / or cached at their ISP or company system. Normally I would have asked for the URL of the file to see if I could reach it, but given the OP being sensitive to that with maybe legal issues I did not ask –
What the OP might do is contact someone (or more than one person) that is not on their system (maybe even in a different area) and has not visited the site or accessed the file, in question and see if the file can be accessed by someone that has never visited the site. I have had some very bad caching issues a few times and the problem was not at WordPress.COM but somewhere in my ISP or someplace
-
Good thinking. :)
Deleting blogs and/or blog content does not remove any indexed items from the SERPs (search engine page results). Google and Bing only clear their caches of deleted indexed content that produces a 404 (page not found) every 3 – 6 months.
-
Trying to view the file on your site should result in a 404 File Not Found error. If you are still able to see the pdf, you may need to clear your browser’s cache and cookies.
It’s up to Google to decide when and how to include/remove this page from search results, WordPress.com doesn’t have any control over that. For more information you can read our FAQ about search engines here:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/search-engines/You can try requesting removal from Google by following the instructions here:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=92865Google also provides information and tools for webmasters, you might find further information on their tools here:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/webmaster-tools/Hope this helps!
- The topic ‘Deleted media file appearing in Google Search, still appearing for visitors’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 