Google`s New Content Removal Tools - And the People Say
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Bloggers have been discussing this issue somewhat tamely, in part because there is hardly any information on it. Still, there are some people who claim that Google as a gatekeeper should seek to cache as much as possible for historical purposes. This is a moot point, judging from the outrage displayed when Google swapped pre-Katrina images for post-Katrina pages in New Orleans in Google Maps; it was pretty phenomenal. Basically the "owners" of the content complained that they were being misrepresented. Google never claimed to be historians, and nobody is buying them extra servers to save all that lovely history.
Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land noted that Google should not give third parties so much power over cached copies, saying that people could easily wipe out cached copies if they notice changes in the page. Google says that that’s the point; if the page content changes, they want their cached copies to reflect those changes. Danny Sullivan has actually been following these new tools extremely closely and I have to acknowledge that my first whiff of it was when I checked out Search Engine Land. His article on it remains the only article resource (apart from this one) on the SERPs for "Google Content Removal Tools;" do check his article out here.
I believe that Google is right in wanting accurate and timely information. But they really should separate caches and descriptions. Not having a description on a page is not cool, believe me -- all you see is a bunch of links.
I am having a party "blasting" various cached pages which have been changed (bad, bad me). I found Danny's article when I was looking for a way to quickly remove some listings from the SERPs. I was especially happy to have the tool when I discovered cached copies of pages I had deleted close to three months ago! I particularly love the tool for removal of copyright infringing material.
I'm still monitoring the ripple effects of this tool. I like its ergonomics; it is extremely easy to use. If you ever want to remove a page from Google's index or cache, this tool will make it a simple task.
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