There are just two situations when Google removes pages from their index. Danny Sullivan from Google recently posted about them:
- Content that violates the law
- Content that can be termed as highly personal
Danny further explained the nuances and grey areas. The laws vary based on the location, particularly in regards to privacy and defamation.
Copyright violations, on the other hand, are hard to confirm unless reported. Child sex abuse material is virtually everywhere an can be detected easily by automated systems.
He noted that Google has published a policy for personal informatoin removal and sites with exploitation materials, personal threats, and doxxing.
He went on to explain how Google looks for patterns to address these issues, “with trillions of pages and more being added each minute.”
Eliminating inappropriate content page by page or denying access to the entire site cannot be seen as an ideal option, as it isn’t scalable. The entire site would be affected only in instances where there is “a high volume of valid copyright removal requests.” This can be used as a reason to demote the site in the search results.
He also pointed out the fact that Google mostly relies on reported content.
What You Can Do – Before reporting any type of content, have a look to see whether it can qualify as violating or not. Also, keep in mind that even if the content gets removed from Google’s index, it isn’t completely removed from the web.
