I have a page that I took down a while ago, but it's ranking on the first page for it's key word, and displaying a 404 :(

[MissThumann]

Can someone please tell me how I stop the page being found??

[Linda-Vassily]

If it is a true 404, it will drop out of Google's index on its own. If it is a soft 404, returning what looks like a 404 page without a 404 response, you should fix it so it returns the correct response code. (Though it will still drop out eventually, because the content is not there.)

Fetch as Google is handy if you want Google to recrawl your page, to make sure it sees the current content.

Assuming the keyword is still relevant, why not update/rewrite it and keep the page one ranking?

[DonnaDuncan]

You can also use Google Search Console to ask Google to temporarily remove the page from its index. As Linda said, it should eventually drop off the index on its own, but this can help speed it up.

Go to Search Console > Google Index > Remove URLs.

I'd also make sure I wasn't continuing to link internally to the page.

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[mcncl]

Another vote for redirecting it to a relevant page on a new website.

[Linda-Vassily]

I didn't know about that remove functionality—you learn something new every day.

The point about internal links to the 404 page is a good one. Having those links sends Google mixed messages and could be a reason for a 404 page not to drop out of the index.