Article Taking Forever to Deindex

1. 67

   eugbugposted 18 months ago

   As you'll remember, I unpublished the the version of an old article and republished the old one. I think it must be nearly two weeks since I did this. Unfortunately Google hasn't indexed the republished old one and when I search for the URL of it, the old version shows up in searches, even though it returns a 404 when I click on it. So is there anything Hubpages or I can do to fix this?

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2. 81

   EricDockettposted 18 months ago

   You can request the removal of outdated content. Click on the three dots next to your search result, then go to "Remove Result" at the bottom, then "It's Outdated". You'll have to sign in to your Google account.
   
   As long as the URL returns a 404 it should get taken out reasonably quickly.

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   1. 67

      eugbugposted 18 months agoin reply to this

      Is that only on a mobile device? This is the bottom of the window that appears when I click the three dots:
      
      

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      1. 81

         EricDockettposted 18 months agoin reply to this

         On my desktop. Using both Chrome and Edge. I see a pane beneath that with Remove Result, Privacy Settings, How Search Works, and Cached.
         
         It is going to fall out of search eventually and is not likely to hurt your other article. I rarely make a request through Google unless I'm immediately planning to republish elsewhere.

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         1. 67

            eugbugposted 18 months agoin reply to this

            Ok, I'm using Firefox, so maybe it has an issue with pop up window sizes.
            
            Edit: Tried Chrome and Edge and there's still no option to do this. There must be a bug where not all the window is shown on some display devices. On Edge, I have "Privacy Settings, "How Search Works" and "Cached".

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3. 67

   eugbugposted 18 months ago

   It seems to have been finally deindexed and the old URL restored.

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4. 67

   eugbugposted 18 months ago

   ....unfortunately I've lost all ranking for terms that had the featured snippet and I'm not even listed in search results. Maybe I'll regain ranking in a couple of years. Does anyone know how this process works? It seems things start from scratch when an article is unpublished and republished if a lot of time has passed. How come? Does Goes Google build inertia into the ranking?

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   1. 68

      PaulGoodman67posted 18 months agoin reply to this

      I think the gradual improvement in views over time comes in large part from accruing backlinks. You can lose backlink power when you unpublish an article for an extended period (plus obviously no new backlinks are being acquired during this time).
      
      So even if you republish it later and use the same url, the article may not do so well.
      
      That's how I interpret it.
      
      The republished article can in theory acquire backlinks and improve over time but that might be challenging in the current environment.

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5. 67

   eugbugposted 18 months ago

   Traffic is now improving to the original version of this article. It's up to 14 views per day, but I don't know whether those are organic views or direct views because I haven't worked out to use the new GA yet. Hubpages stats graphs show zero views for the last two weeks.

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