Recently, I needed to get rid of googles indexing and cache of a directory on one of our ftp servers.
This is easier than I was expecting, but a description may save other people pain (this is usually an operation that needs doing in a hurry …)
- arrange to have a google account that isn’t a university-of-cambridge managed one
- visit google webmaster tools
- click on the red “add a property” button
- follow the instructions by adding the url of a property. This can be in the form ftp://servername/ OR http://servername/
- Download the HTML verification file that is produced, and place it (preserving its filename) in the top directory of the server.
- click the red “Verify” button
Your google account now “owns” that server, as far as google is concerned.
- If you return to the google webmaster tools page and select the specific server, the left sidebar will have a “Google Index” section, within which there is a “Remove URLs” link – click on this.
- Click the “Create a new removal request” button.
- Specify the URL just by giving the local part (ie everything after the hostname) (this avoids confusing the interface when you’re dealing with an ftp server; it probably doesn’t matter with an http server).
- Click “Continue”
- Select “Remove directory” in the pull-down menu
- Click “Submit Request”
Now repeat this for every variant hostname that your server uses, if you’ve done the multiple CNAMEs thing.
It’s not instant, but in practice appears to take a few hours (which was better than I’d been expecting).
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