Indexed Link Removal request in GWT, good idea?

[Rank-and-Grow]

Hello,

I used a plugin to no-index a lot of pages on my website, and its been couple months and they never disappeared from serps, so i used the google webmaster tool "remove urls" to ask google to  remove them. Is that a good idea? Or does it look bad in googles eyes? any thoughts would help a lot.

Thanks

[matbennett]

If you have set them up for removal and no longer want them in the index then go for it. That is what the tool is for.

There was some suggestion from John Mueller some time ago that lots of removals could be seen as an issue, but it seems that is an exception.

[Toddfoster]

Hello Vlad,

You are using the tool correctly - as Mat said, this is what the tool is for.

There seems to be something of a consensus that removing an entire link profile (due to extended poor linking processes) is a red flag and might be negatively assessed. That being said, if you are removing a couple bad pages from your profile in order to provide a better experience (or as a response to negative SEO), this is in line with "best practices" and will not be penalized. If you have already gone to the trouble of nofollow-ing them, you should also have them removed as they might hurt you in the future if they are not addressed.

Of course, you could stick with the nofollow for now and see if it impacts your rankings negatively - if so, move to the removal. If not, there's no risk in doing nothing.

Cheers!

Rob