Should you use google url remover if older indexed pages are still being kept?

[Deacyde]

Hello,

A client recently did a redesign a few months ago, resulting in 700 pages being reduced to 60, mostly due to panda penalty and just low interest in products on those pages. Now google is still indexing a good number of them ( around 650 ) when we only have 70 on our sitemap.

Thing is google indexes our site on average now for 115 urls when we only have 60 urls that need indexing and only 70 on our sitemap. I would of thought these urls would be crawled and not found, but is taking a very long period of time.

Our rankings haven't recovered as much as we'd hope, and we believe that the indexed older pages are causes this.

Would you agree and also would you think removing those old urls via the remover tool would be best option? It would mean using the url remover tool for 650 pages.

Thank you in advance

[GastonRiera]

Hi there!

How long ago did the redesign take place?
All those pages that you want to be unindexed show any content?

In my experience, it took about 4 weeks to desapear from the index. But to get the pages taken down, those should be a 404.

[Deacyde]

Hello and Thanks!

How long ago did the redesign take place?

March 2016

All those pages that you want to be unindexed show any content?

No, in fact, when I search google site:domain.com I get 800 urls, but only page 1 - 5 have results, despite results showing 10 pages, so it's still cached but not the content, I believe?

These have been 404'd which is why I'm kinda at a loss as to whats going on.

[GastonRiera]

Just to clarify: Did check that there are no duplicate URL problems? Such as www and non-www.

In case that you've checked and everything is correct. Then, you're on the right path, I hope: Only 5pages with results, that makes 60 URL in SERPs.
Those that are only cached, will be gone.

Hope it helps.
GR.

[Deacyde]

Thanks!

Was hoping to recover a month ago but if google is still having these old urls cached, then they very well think we have them still, so hopefully once the urls are gone in google's brain we should see some improvement.

Thanks for clearing that up, hope this helps others in the same boat or somewhat close.