Google Search Console has launched new removals tools that does three things;
1. Lets you hide URLs from showing in Google search temporarily.
2. Shows you “outdated content” that is not in Google.
3. Shows you the URLs that are filtered by Google’s SafeSearch filter.
To access the tool within Google Search Console, you can go “Removals” under the “Index” menu. You can also go to the https://search.google.com/search-console/removals and then select a property.
Here is what the screen looks like;
Temporarily remove URLs
You can remove URLs from showing in Google search quickly via Google Search Console. This feature was in the old Search Console and is available in the new version now.
Temporary removals do not actually delete your URL from Google’s index. It simply hides your URL for about six-months from showing up in the search results. You will have to use 404, robots.txt or another method to permanently block the URL in the future.
There are two types of removals;
Temporary remove URL will hide the URL from search results for about six months and also clear the cached copy of the page
Clear cache URL clears the cached pages and removes the page description snippet in search results until the page is crawled again
Outdated content
This section provides information on removal requests made through the public Remove Outdated Content tool. According to Google, anyone can use this to update search results showing information that is no longer available on a page.
You can view the history of all requests to update or remove outdated Google Search results for your website that were done using the Remove Outdated Content tool in the last six months.
SafeSearch filtering
The SafeSearch filtering section shows you which content was reported as adult content. Google users can use the SafeSearch suggestion tool to report specific URLs as adult-only to Google. The submitted URLs are reviewed and will be tagged as adult content if Google feels that the content should be filtered from the SafeSearch results.
This tool is a great tool for webmasters and SEOs as it helps them know which of their content was removed due to SafeSearch.
SafeSearch filtering tool gives webmasters, site owners, SEOs and others access to not just remove the content from Google search but also see why the content was removed due to third-party requests. You can then take action to unblock content removal requests you made and also the third-party requests due to outdated content or SafeSearch filtering.