Outdated content removal is asking a search engine to update or drop a result whose page has already been deleted or changed, so the old title and snippet stop appearing.
Search engines show a stored version of a page's title, description and sometimes image until they recrawl it. After content is removed or edited at the source, that old information can keep appearing for days or weeks. Google's Refresh Outdated Content tool lets anyone ask Google to recrawl a URL or an image, so the result is dropped if the page is gone or the snippet updated if the content has changed.
It works only once the change has really happened at the source; it cannot remove a page that is still live with the same content. Outdated information is also a ground in its own right under EU and UK data protection law, where information that is no longer relevant can be delisted under the right to be forgotten even while the page stays online.
In practice
After a publisher deletes an article, a profile is taken down or a post is edited, an outdated-content request is the free step that makes the change visible in search. If the page itself has not changed, the options are a request to the publisher, a policy- or law-based de-indexing request, or, in Europe, a right-to-be-forgotten request.
Source: Google Search Help — Refresh outdated content ↗
Related removals
- SERP de-indexing — $1,500 per URL, pay on success
- News article removal — $1,500 per URL, pay on success
- Mugshot removal — $1,500 per URL, pay on success
Related terms
- Source removal — Source removal means deleting content where it is actually published — on the website, platform or server that hosts it — rather than only hiding it from search results.
- SERP de-indexing — SERP de-indexing is the removal of a specific URL from search engine results pages, so it stops appearing in searches even though the page itself may still exist.
- Right to be forgotten — The right to be forgotten lets people in the EU and UK ask search engines to delist results about them that are outdated, irrelevant or excessive, unless the public interest outweighs it.
- Data broker — A data broker is a company that collects personal information about people it has no direct relationship with and sells, licenses or publishes it, often through people-search websites.