Should We Remove Content Through Google Webmaster Tools?

[d50-Media]

We recently collapsed an existing site in order to relaunch it as a much smaller, much higher quality site. In doing so, we're facing some indexation issues whereas a large number of our old URLs (301'd where appropriate) still show up for a site:domain search.

Some relevant notes:

• We transitioned the site from SiteCore to Wordpress to allow for greater flexibility
• The Wordpress CMS went live on 11/22 (same legacy content, but in the new CMS)
• The new content (and all required 301s) went live on 12/2
• The site's total number of URLS is currently at 173 (confirmed by ScreamingFrog)
• As of posting this question, a site:domain search shows 6,110 results

While it's a very large manual effort, is there any reason to believe that submitting removal requests through Google Webmaster Tools would be helpful?

We simply want all indexation of old pages and content to disappear - and for Google to treat the site as a new site on the same old domain.

[Ray-pp]

If you have implemented 301 redirects properly, then the old URLs (the ones redirecting to the new site) will naturally drop from the search engines as Google deems appropriate. There are a number of factors that influence when a page gets deindexed, such as the crawl rate for a website and how many links it may have.

If you really desire the pages to be removed, then as you've suggested you can ask for their removal from GWT. However, there is no harm is allowing them to stay indexed and waiting for Google to adjust appropriately.

[DonnaDuncan]

I agree with Ray-pp. It can take some time - weeks to months - for Google to catch up with the changes made to the site. Sounds like something else might be going on causing you to have so many extra pages indexed. Can you explain the cause of having ~5,000 extra pages indexed? When did they first start to appear? Are you sure you've configured your wordpress implementation to minimize unnecessary duplicates?

[JVRudnick]

As Donna pointed out, the 'delay' tween what you expect time-line wise and what Google can 'do' is often longer than anyone would wish........