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.
When content is removed at the source, it is no longer available to anyone who visits the page, follows a shared link or views an embed, and search engines drop the result once they recrawl the page. That makes it more complete than de-indexing, which leaves the page online but out of search results, and than suppression, which only pushes it further down.
Source removal is achieved by asking the publisher or author, by reporting under the platform's policies, through legal notices to the platform or host (copyright, privacy, defamation or DSA), or, for unlawful sites, through the hosting provider and registrar.
In practice
Removing the source first usually makes everything else easier: once the original page is gone, a search engine's outdated-content tool can clear the remaining result and snippet. When the source cannot be removed — a publisher refuses, or the site is out of reach — de-indexing is the fallback. Copies, reposts and archives are separate sources, and each needs its own request.
Related removals
- News article removal — $1,500 per URL, pay on success
- SERP de-indexing — $1,500 per URL, pay on success
- Reputation management — Priced per removal, from $350, pay on success
Related terms
- 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.
- Outdated content removal — Outdated content removal is asking a search engine to update or drop a result whose page has already been deleted or changed, so the old title and snippet stop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.
- Content removal — Content removal is the process of getting harmful or unlawful material taken off the website or platform that hosts it, or out of search results, through policy reports and legal requests.
- oEmbed — oEmbed is an open format that lets a website display content hosted elsewhere, such as a YouTube video or a social post, by fetching embed code from the original platform.